


Born To Run

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Arsonist, Blood, Child Abuse, Fugitives, Gore, Homophobia, Multi, Murder, Polyamory, Serial Killers, Threesome - F/M/M, school shooting, split personality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:35:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy Novak is fine most days, and on bad days... well, he tries not to think about those. The day infamous killers Dean Winchester and Meg Masters walk into his life is a bad one. Kidnapped and forced into bloodbath after bloodbath, he nevertheless starts being seduced by their darkness as they awake something in him he thought had been buried for good...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Nice, Quiet Life

Jimmy Novak was fine most days.

He had established a comfortable routine consisting on going from home, to work, and then back home again. He took his pills every morning before he left his apartment, he bought the newspaper in the same stand as usual, and he climbed on the same bus at 8 a. m. sharp. He even was on first name basis with the driver. At eight thirty, he was lifting the shop blinds at the grocery store. He was alone most time, because Alfie always slept in for his part-time turn, and Norah couldn’t leave until the babysitter arrived in the afternoon. Jimmy didn’t mind. He enjoyed that moment of peace when he could just breathe in the smell of the linoleum floor and stare at the halls like a king admires his kingdom.

At nine o’clock, he turned around the closed sign and helped Norah count the cash. She was a good woman, and a good boss. Jimmy sometimes entertained the thought of asking her out, but he was a married man (It had been five years since he buried Amelia, but he still wore the wedding band). They were usually done by nine thirty, and by ten, Jimmy was on his couch, watching T.V. or going through the pages of his old battered Bible. It was the only book he kept around. If somebody took a look at his apartment, with its white empty walls, its unmade bed with a mattress thin as air and its old, dusty lamp, they would’ve thought Jimmy Novak was a very sad man.

Far from the truth. Jimmy led a small, quiet life, and on good days, that was more than enough for him.

On bad days, well… Norah thought he suffered from migraines and would let him take the day off since he worked the rest of the time. Blessed her heart.

The day Dean Winchester and Meg Masters sauntered into his life to blow it all away, it was a bad one for Jimmy.

The familiar pain had been pulsating inside his skull for hours now, ever since Mrs. Shanley had snapped at him while paying for her groceries. She had never been a pleasant woman, but that morning she had been particularly bitter.

“Good day!” she repeated in a mocking tone. “Good day! It won’t be day anymore by the time I get home, if I get there at all!”

“What’s her problem?” Jimmy asked Alfie once she had left. He wasn’t in the habit of insulting clients, but it was like something – someone – was hammering in his brain, and he just really couldn’t wait for Norah to arrive so he could take his leave.

“She’s probably mad about the police barricades,” said Alfie, leaning on the counter. He was nineteen and looked so small and fragile sometimes Jimmy wondered how he was able to hold a mop. “I heard they’re gonna cause a big jam downtown.”

“Police barricades?” asked Jimmy, with the hairs of the back of his head standing to attention.

“Yeah, apparently they’re looking for these two serial killers,” said Alfie, his eyes lighting up with hope.

Rexford, Idaho, was a small town, and things like having serial killers on the loose was always something that happened elsewhere, so his enthusiasm had to be forgiven. Or that’s what Jimmy told himself when he felt a heave crawling up his chest, and the uncomfortable pressure behind his eyes grew, and then kept growing throughout the day.

He tried to ignore it by keeping himself busy: he fixed the coffee machine (that didn’t need any fixing), refilled the shelves in record time and mopped the bathrooms. Twice. By the time there was nothing left to do, it was two o’clock, and something – someone – was drilling a hole in his brain.

“You okay, dude?” Alfie asked, knocking on the bathroom stall’s door.

Jimmy blinked. He was sitting on the toilet, and had no idea how he’d got there.

“Yes, I’m fine,” he lied. “Just give me a moment.”

He heard Alfie’s light steps walking away, and tried to stand up, but the walls began spinning, so he sat back down and hid his head between his legs. It was starting. Oh, God, he needed to get out of there, but his body just wouldn’t collaborate. He didn’t know how long he stayed in the same position, but after a while, Norah’s black low heels shoes appeared in his line of vision.

“Jimmy?” she called. “Are you having a headache?”

If it only was so simple, Jimmy thought to himself.

“Yes,” he lied again. “I’m sorry, Norah. I shouldn’t have come today…”

“That’s okay,” said Norah, always comprehensive. “Open up so I can help you.”

Jimmy raised his head – slowly, steady, each of his movements needed to be premeditated now, because it was like his limbs now weighed a ton, and he knew they wouldn’t be _his_ limbs for long – and unlocked the door. Norah stood in front of him, frowning in concern.

“Oh, Jimmy,” she said, and before Jimmy could say anything, she put his arm around her shoulders, and helped him stand up. “Let’s get you home.”

“It’s fine,” Jimmy babbled. His tongue felt heavy against his lips, and he had no way to know if was sounding coherent or not. “I just… gotta take my pills…”

The lights shining above the aisles blinded him. He was out of the bathroom, and gently being carried by Norah, taking baby steps, looking at his feet and fighting the vomit that burned in the back of his throat. He hoped there were no clients to see him, it would really be bad for business if…

“Oh, my God!” Norah’s scream pierced his ear, and a high pitching noise deafened him for a minute.

He was vaguely aware his boss had let go of him and he was falling, and there was more screaming. The walls around him were closing in, and the ceiling was getting closer and closer, like the store, like the whole word was falling apart. The acute noise became louder and louder, and Jimmy Novak closed his eyes, not knowing when he would open them again.

 

* * *

 

Meg hovered over the passed out man in front of the bathroom door, and kicked him on the ribs, as hard as she could. There was no reaction.

“Yeah, I don’t think we should worry about this one,” she told her partner, shrugging.

“Good,” said Dean, holding the knife against the struggling woman’s throat. “Now, lady, calm down… if you do everything we say, there’s no reason for us not to get along…”

“Please,” cried Norah, falling to her knees as she was unable to escape Dean’s grip. “Please… I have a daughter… just take all the money…”

“Oh, we’re doing that, sweetie,” said Meg. “But you see, we haven’t had fun in weeks, and we’re getting a bit unrest,” she tilted her head towards the counter, where Alfie laid weeping quietly. “And that one’s still breathing.”

Alfie let out a whimper, too weak and scared to manage an actual scream. He had a hand against the wound in his stomach, with a stream of blood running between his fingers and staining the floor around him. Meg squatted in front of him, a playful smirk on her lips.

“He’s so skinny,” she commented. “How much do you think he’s going to last, Dean?”

“Not much,” said her partner. “Ten, fifteen minutes?”

“I once killed a girl who was just as skinny as you,” said Meg, placing the knife against Alfie’s cheek, as the kid’s sobs became louder. “She bled out in seven minutes. I counted them.”

“We don’t have that much time, Meg,” said Dean, coolly.

“Right,” Meg clicked her tongue, annoyed as a child who was being told to it was her bed time. “But I’m really getting bored…”

“I know, baby,” said Dean, softening his tone. “Next town over. I promise.”

Meg scanned her partner’s features as if to make sure he was telling the truth. Then, slowly, almost clinically, she slashed Alfie’s throat. The boy gasped for air only to choke on his blood as a neat red line appeared on his neck, and then his body dropped to one side, with a loud thump. Norah called Alfie’s name as loud as she dared.

“What’s your kid’s name?” Dean asked, ignoring her.

“Please,” Norah begged, shaking violently. “Please…”

“I said,” Dean insisted, the knife so close to her neck Norah could feel the steel almost biting her skin, “what’s her name?”

“Tanya”, Norah managed to say. “She’s six months old… please, please, don’t kill me…”

“Nah, _I_ wouldn’t kill you,” said Dean. “What you think I am? Some kind of monster?”

Meg snickered quietly. She was consciously cleaning the knife against Alfie’s jeans, slowly, like she was fascinated by the fact the blood would just stay on the fabric.

“You’re gonna help us out, Norah,” said Dean, calmly putting the knife away and grabbing her by the elbow to get her to stand up. “We need to get out of town, but we can’t with all those pesky cops and their barricades. So we figured ‘Hey, maybe we can hitch a ride with someone’.”

“You’re going to drive us,” continued Meg, taking a step towards her. “And then we’re going to take your car. And if you cooperate through this whole deal… we’ll let you go back to your precious baby. Do you understand? Yes or no. I want nothing else coming out from your mouth.”

“Yes,” said Norah, nodding to emphasize her point or contain herself from further begging. “Yes.”

“Very good,” Meg said, satisfied, and made a gesture towards Dean, who turned around and started dragging Norah to the door. “And you might want to stop crying. We don’t need any…”

Norah never find out what they didn’t need. Meg’s voice faded on a choking sound, and Dean turned around with Norah still grabbed by the arm, who could do nothing but follow his movements like a rag doll. For a moment, she was about to cry of relief: Jimmy was up, with an arm around the killer’s waist and the other around her throat, immobilizing and choking her simultaneously.

“Let her go,” Jimmy demanded, and his tone of voice sent a shiver down Norah’s spine. He didn’t sound like the kind, mild-manner man she had known for years. His tone was deeper and more decided, and the expression he had in his face was one of utter contempt, without a trace of fear, like Meg and Dean were nothing but insects he could crash under his foot.

“Yeah, I don’t think so, buddy,” said Dean. He sounded slightly amused, and raised the knife so Jimmy could see it.

“You think you can hurt me with something like that?” asked Jimmy, tilting his head, and (Norah would later swear he had almost smiled).

“No,” said Dean. “But she can.”

Without a warning, Meg raised her arm and sank her knife on Jimmy’s forearm. The man took a step back in surprised, with a whelp of surprise, and Meg turned around and kneeled him right between the legs with some much force Jimmy felt to his knees.

“What kind… of creature are you?” he gasped.

“A girl,” said Meg, shrugging again. “Never seen one, pal?”

“Kill him and let’s go, Meg,” said Dean, pulling Norah towards the door.

Meg didn’t move. She turned towards Norah, and then back to Jimmy, like she was making a very delicate decision.

“Let’s take this one, instead,” she said, finally. “Once we are out we can just… have some fun with him.”

“Baby, that’s not how hostages work,” said Dean, exasperated, like he had explained the rules a bunch of times, but Meg insisted on breaking them. “See… she has a motivation to come with us,” he said, shaking Norah, as if to illustrate a point. “Why’s he gonna help us if he knows we plan to kill him after all?”

“But I like him,” Meg protested, pouting.

Dean cast a look in Norah’s direction, as if he was saying “See what I have to deal with?”, and opened his mouth, probably to tell Meg again they couldn’t take Jimmy, when the man in question stood up, adopting a very rigid position. His face was blank, and there was blood dripping from his sleeve he didn’t seem to notice.

“I will come with you,” he declared, still in that voice that was so unlike him. “If only to find out what exactly are you. And to find out how to kill you.”

“Jimmy,” Norah begged. “Jimmy, please, you don’t have to do this…”

“I am not Jimmy,” said Jimmy. “Worry not. I will make sure they don’t hurt you any further.”

“There you have it, the guy has a death wish,” said Meg, and without wasting any more time, stood behind him, gently pressing the point of her knife between his ribs. “Can we _please_ take him, now?”

Dean hesitated only a moment longer.

“Fine by me,” he concluded, and threw Norah to the floor so hard she hit her head. The room spun around for a couple of minutes, and after that the store manager barely caught a glimpse of the three figures rapidly moving across the parking lot.

Another scream escaped her lips, this one of relief. She was alive. They were gone. Crying and thanking God under her breath, she clutched to the shelves, and trying not to stare at Alfie’s lifeless body, dragged herself towards the phone.


	2. Secrets

Jimmy Novak woke up handcuffed to a radiator, in a motel miles away from Rexford, Idaho. His nice, quiet life was over, but it took him a minute or two to realize that.

The first thing he noticed, in fact, was that someone was taking a shower. He could hear the water running, and he was thankful for that monotonous sound to ease his aching head. Amelia was probably getting ready to go to work, and she’d soon be coming out, and probably snap at him for still being in bed. He needed to wake up.

He opened his eyes, and tried to focus on the wallpaper. The pattern was unfamiliar. Back in Pontiac, he’d had a flowery wallpaper, with little daisies aligning next to green lines. Amelia had chosen it, and after fifteen years of staring at it last thing before going to sleep and first thing in the morning, Jimmy had grown to hate it. He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember what his wife’s laughter sounded like, but he could have drawn their room’s goddamn wallpaper by heart.

He didn’t have wallpaper in Rexford. Only white walls he’d never come around to paint.

And maybe that was the detail that brought him back to the present. The wallpaper he was staring at now had little spirals in it.

Jimmy jolted awake, and hit his forehead against the radiator. A wave of panic washed through him. He had no idea where he was, or how he’d gotten there. The last thing he remembered was Norah helping him to get out of the bathroom, and then the lights had shone bright upon his eyes…

“Oh, God,” he muttered to himself, as his heart began to accelerate. “Oh, God!”

He tried to get up, but the jingle of the handcuffs warned him he wasn’t going anywhere. The fear took over his mind, and before Jimmy could control it, he was howling, calling onto someone and anyone for help.

The water stopped, and a brunette woman came out of the bathroom, wrapped up in a light blue towel and dripping wet.

“What is it?” she asked, but Jimmy could only keep screaming. “Shut up!”

She forcefully grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him, but that only made him scream more, so she pushed his head against the radiator and covered his mouth and his nose with both hands, so tight Jimmy could barely breathe. The tears burned in his cheeks, and just when he thought things couldn’t get worse, the room’s door burst opened, and a man wielding a knife charged in.

“What’s going on?” asked the man.

“He’s having an attack of some kind,” the woman told him, without loosening the pressure against Jimmy’s mouth. “I can’t shut him up!”

The man took the practical approach. He kneeled next to them, and carefully placed the tip of his knife against Jimmy’s neck. The prisoner’s blood ran cold.

“Now, this is a nice artery you have here,” said the man, in a tone that indicated he was mildly amuse by Jimmy’s panic. “I don’t know its name. Never was the kind that paid attention in class. But I _do_ know it makes a pretty little mess when you cut it. You know what I mean?”

Jimmy, who was starting to see black dots floating in front of his eyes, nodded as enthusiastically as he could.

“You gonna be a good buddy and stay quiet?” asked the man, and Jimmy nodded again.

The woman removed her hands, and he took a deep gulp of air. He wanted to keep shouting, but the impulse died in a sobbing he couldn’t repress. For a couple of minutes he was aware of nothing around him, and then, timidly, he looked up.

“… for a second there, I thought you had started without me,” the man was saying, wrapping his arms around the woman’s waist. Jimmy recognized his profile. He had seen it spread across his morning newspaper several times in the last few months, and sometimes in the small TV in the grocery shop.

“You’re Dean Winchester,” he said, and his voice sounded broken and weak. The man turned his attention to him. The blade was still in his hand, and with a whimper, Jimmy wished he had said nothing.

“Oh, so you’re a fan now?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “What happened to all the talking about demons and eternal fire?”

The woman (Megan Masters, Jimmy remembered, she had to be. Dean’s partner in crime) sat on one of the queen beds, still naked except for the towel, and frowned.

“Dean,” she said. “Something’s different.”

“I’ll say,” said Dean, rolling his eyes. “First time the guy stays quiet enough for me to hear my own thoughts.”

“No, I mean, look at him,” Megan insisted. “He’s a mess. He’s scared. He’s… he’s pathetic. This isn’t the guy we picked up in Idaho.”

So he wasn’t even in the same state anymore. Jimmy managed not to scream again by biting his tongue until he tasted his own blood. Dean was tilting his head.

“You know what? You’re right,” he conceded. “He doesn’t even _sound_ the same.”

Jimmy looked up at them, and wished he could at least stop crying. He had never said out loud what he was about to say, and he really didn’t know what he could possibly gain from saying it. But he was convinced these people were going to kill him in the end (wasn’t that what they did? He’d read it in the newspaper. Sometimes, they tortured their victims for days), and maybe he just didn’t want the secret to die with him. Confession was good for the soul, after all.

“I-I have… I have DID,” he said. Dean blinked and turned to his partner, confused.

“Okay,” said Meg, frowning a little deeper. “Uh… we weren’t planning to have sex with you anyway.”

“Dissociative identity disorder,” Jimmy clarified, forcing himself to speak a little louder. “Split personality.”

“What, like, a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde kind of deal?” asked Meg.

“Oh, great, so we didn’t just get ourselves a religious nutjob, we got an _actual_ nutjob,” said Dean. “Awesome.”

“I’m not crazy!” said Jimmy, and came out a lot more confrontational than he intended. Dean’s grip around the knife tightened, and Jimmy cringed and shrank against the radiator. “I was fine… I had it under control, I…”

He couldn’t keep speaking. The lump on his throat was back, and he wasn’t sure how much tolerant they were going to be to his sobbing.

Megan clicked her tongue in disappointment, and stood up.

“Well, damn,” she said. “I liked the other guy better. He at least had some fight in him.”

She walked around the bed, while Dean sat on the other one and turned on the TV. Jimmy wondered if he should’ve felt at least a little bit offended. He had just confessed a secret that had been crushing him for years, and they didn’t find it even remotely interesting.

Then it hit him just how ridiculous that was.

It was strange the things the mind chose to get hung up on when it was under stress.

Like, for example, the fact that Dean had found a lighter in one of his pockets, and was now toying with it, distractedly, clicking it open and closed again. The little dancing flame made his green eyes shine.

And right behind him, Megan had dropped the towel, and was looking for something in a duffle bag, with her naked back and ass shamelessly exposed. Jimmy looked away. He had the feeling Dean was the kind of man that would cut your throat for so much glancing in the general direction of his girlfriend.

“… notorious murderers Dean Winchester and Megan Masters…”

“Meg, we’re on,” said Dean, putting away his lighter and turning the volume up. Meg, who was now wearing a plaid shirt too big for her and panties, and for some reason, seemed even more naked than before, kneeled on the bed behind him, and put an arm around his neck.

“… the police are looking for James Novak, who was abducted from the grocery store where he worked at yesterday afternoon…”

“No picture of him,” said Dean, tilting his head.

“Not even from his driver’s license? That’d be a first,” Meg pointed.

“… Samandriel Johnston, who worked at the same grocery store, is another victim of the killing spree…”

“That wasn’t the name in his tag,” Meg commented.

“Alfie was his middle name,” said Jimmy. “He didn’t like to be called ‘Samandriel’.”

The looked at him like they had forgotten he was there, or the way they’d look at a piece of furniture if it suddenly started talking. Again, Jimmy didn’t know why he was telling them that. Except that the news Alfie was dead was starting to sink in, and Jimmy suddenly wished he’d never woken up.

“You really killed him?” he asked.

Meg shrugged. “I was bored.”

It was the tone in which say it what really did for him. Jimmy knew it wasn’t good for him to get angry. But he just couldn’t help it.

“He was nineteen,” he said, and then a little louder. “Nineteen!”

He was half-expecting it, but the jab of pain inside his head and the high pitch noise in his ears still startled him enough to completely miss what Dean said. It didn’t matter. It was probably just another threat.

“We all have to die sometime,” said Meg. “Some of us sooner than later.”

She slid her hand inside Dean’s leather jacket, but he stopped her with a light touch on her wrist.

“Not here,” he said. “It’d be too much trouble to get rid of him.”

“But you promised!” Meg protested.

“I know, baby, I know,” said Dean, running his fingers through her hair, as if to calm her down. “Tomorrow, okay? We just have to find some place where we won’t be bothered, and then you can take as much time as you want with him.”

Meg’s expression was a hurt one. Like Dean had just denied her favorite candy.

“Sam would have let me kill him,” she said, and before Dean could react, she got up and went to lie down on the other bed, with her back towards him.

“Come on, Meg, don’t be like that!” Dean complained, but she simply threw the cover over her head and ignored him.

Dean let out a huff, and took off his jacket. Then his shirt. Jimmy concentrated really hard on the spirals of the wallpaper then, and counted to ten. His headache grew worse. He heard Dean moving across the room, and he caught a glimpse of the killer stripped down to his boxers before he hit the light’s switch. The room went dark, except for the distant glow of the parking lot’s lamppost.

Dean fell on the bed, not even bothering with getting under the covers. Jimmy could see the silhouette of his back, and moved awkwardly to try to get even further away from him. The handcuffs tinkled against the radiator, and Dean huffed again before he turned to his would-be victim.

“What?” he groaned.

“I-I’m sorry,” Jimmy stuttered. “I’m just… uncomfortable.”

“And why the fuck did you think that I’d care?” Dean asked, and Jimmy went quiet. A second later, a pillow hit his head. “There. Enjoy your last night, pal.”

Jimmy decided against thanking him. He put the pillow on the floor and discovered he could move enough to get in a lying position, although his handcuffed arm was still lifted over the ground, and would probably be sore in the morning. Well, it wasn’t like that sort of thing would be a problem much longer.

With those gloomy thoughts, Jimmy closed his eyes and tried to catch some sleep.

* * *

 

Someone was moving across the room. Jimmy’s eyes shot open, and he moved his head very slowly. Meg’s dark figure was standing next to Dean’s bed, and for terrifying second, he thought she might just kill them both, or walk around the bed and kill him ignoring her partner’s warning.

Instead, she slid under the covers next to Dean.

“Hey,” she whispered, but Jimmy could still hear her in the quiet room. “I don’t want to fight. I’m sorry.”

There was some rustling as Dean turned around to hug her, his back again in Jimmy’s line of vision.

“It’s okay,” he said. His tone was calm and drowsy. “I know you miss Sam. I miss him, too.”

In the silence that followed, Jimmy recalled something else he had read. Dean’s brother had been caught a couple of years before. Some people were saying he should’ve received the death penalty, but the killer had managed to get a life sentence out of a deal with the DA. Jimmy couldn’t remember if his name was Sam, but it sounded like they were talking about him.

“We can’t end like him, baby,” Dean was saying now. “The pigs got too close in Idaho. After this, we gotta go to Bobby’s cabin and lay low for a while. You understand that, right?”

Meg let a soft groan against his neck.

“It’s gonna be so _boring_ ,” she complained.

“We’ll find something to entertain ourselves,” said Dean.

They didn’t say anything else, and Jimmy thought they’d fallen asleep. He began drifting off, hoping the torturous hours he had ahead of him would go fast, hoping his death would be mercifully fast...

“Hey,” Meg spoke again. “When we kill this guy… is it gonna count like we killed two?”

Dean’s chuckle sent shivers down Jimmy’s back.


	3. Angel of Death

There were two things Dean Winchester enjoyed above all else.

One of them was the purring of a well-tuned motor, the open road in front of him, the wind flowing in through the window directly into his face. Occasionally, he liked to spike it with some of his favorite rock songs, singing the lyrics he knew and loved at the top of his lungs, while he drove leaving small town after small town for hours on end.

When that wasn’t possible (and it had become systemically so since some geeky bastard invented the mp3 player for cars and rendered Dean’s cassette tapes collection useless), it always nice to have someone else taking care of the gearstick, so to speak.

And Meg was _really_ trying to make it up to him after the previous night’s knee jerk reaction, so Dean was having a good morning as they burnt the miles away in Norah’s stolen car.

“Right there, baby,” he moaned softly when Meg swirled her tongue around the tip of his dick. “Yes… keep going…”

“Both hands on the wheel,” groaned Meg, and Dean laughed as he let go of the back of her head.

“You know, for a psycho killer you’re awfully concerned about safety… oh!”

Meg had begun sucking him, slowly and gently at first, but deeper and faster as Dean encouraged her with soft curses. Oh, she was going to town, making obscene wet noises every time her head bobbed, working her tongue like Dean’s cock was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. Dean bit his lips hard. It was getting complicated to look ahead instead of closing his eyes in pleasure, but he managed.

“Yes!” he hissed, while Meg shifted to get a better angle. “You’re so good, baby, so good… oh, shit!”

There were police sirens and lights behind them. He had been so distracted he had completely missed where the goddamn pigs had been parked. Meg raised her head, swiftly wiping a drop of pre-cum from her lips with the back of her hand.

“Can we lose them?” she asked.

“They’ll call for backup,” Dean groaned as he tucked his erection inside of his jeans. It was going to be a very uncomfortable conversation, so he hoped the cops would make it short. He stopped at the side of the road, and the cops stopped behind him.

“Good morning,” said one of them. He was fat and sweaty, and Dean could easily picture him popping donuts into his mouth like a sad cliché.

“Is there a problem, officer?” asked Dean, all polite and calm.

“Do you know how fast you were going, sir?” asked the fat cop.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention,” Dean admitted, with a smile and a wave towards Meg, who leaned a little in the cop’s direction, in an angle that would give the pig a better look at her cleavage. That simple gesture had got them out of trouble more times than Dean cared to count.

“It was my fault officer,” she said, with a wink. “I promise, I won’t distract the driver anymore.”

The fat cop hesitated. And for a second, a glorious second, Dean thought he’d let them go, like it’d happened thousands of other times, that they’d get away with theirs without a consequence, and they’d be laughing at the law enforcement incompetence that very same night while Dean eat Meg up to return the favor.

But then the fat cop’s partner approached the car. She was short and had a stern expression on her face.

“Sir, did you know your car’s plate is registered as a stolen vehicle?” she asked.

Dean took a second to put his best surprised face, but then it was a second too late. The fat cop placed a hand on his holster.

“I’m gonna need you to step out of the car,” he said, serious all of the sudden. “You too, miss.”

“Surely, there’s some sort of mistake,” Meg said. She was a far better actress than Dean, but the pigs had already decided they must have done something, so it was all amount to nothing.

“Now, baby, don’t worry,” he said, putting a hand on her knee. “The officers are just doing their job.”

Meg analyzed his face, and then nodded. She opened the door at the same time as Dean. The pigs stepped backwards, both still grazing the holsters with the tip of their fingers. This wasn’t good.

“I need to see your license, please,” the fat cop said.

“Yes, of course,” said Dean, reaching inside his jacket. “I am taking it out now,” he added, when he noticed the pig’s hand getting tighter around the handle.

He could feel the weight of Meg’s eyes on him. She was waiting for a signal. If it was up to her, they’d just take their chances with the cops right then, but Dean didn’t want more people than the strictly necessary getting hurt. They had to go under the radar for a while, at least.

So instead of his favorite knife, he took out one of his fakes licenses, and passed it on to the officer, who stared at it for a couple of seconds, before returning it.

“So how did you come into possession of this car, Mr. Page?” he asked.

“Look, if someone stole it, we know nothing about it,” Dean said, trying to sound rightfully indignant. “My girlfriend and I bought it a couple of days ago…”

“Is that so?” asked the woman, and only then Dean noticed she was standing dangerously close to the trunk. “So there is no problem if we take a look at what you’re carrying?”

Well, good intentions and all that crap could only take you so far. There was a million ways this scenario could go wrong, and Dean was aware of all of them. But Meg would never forgive him if they didn’t take their chances anyway.

“Of course not. No problem at all,” he said, and nodded towards his partner. “Baby, could you please…?”

Meg nodded back. She followed the cop.

There was a click of the trunk getting open.

Dean barely caught a glimpse of the cop’s surprised face, because he was already turning towards the fat pig. He was slow and clumsy, and Dean’s blade sank on his neck before he could even finish drawing the gun. It sank under his skin so beautifully, so easily, and Dean let the rush of power wash over him as the cop stumbled backwards, the blood sprinkling on his uniform, and his sloppy fingers still looking for the hoister…

A shot thundered behind Dean, and the next thing he knew, he was laying on the pavement, with the worst pain he’d ever felt tearing through his body.

 _Don’t fucking scream_ , his father’s voice boomed inside his brain. _Only pussies scream, you hear me? Don’t you dare scream._

Dean didn’t scream, but he bit his lips so hard the metallic taste of his own blood invaded his mouth. He gripped onto the hood of the car, and ignoring the agonizing sting that stemmed from his back, managed to get on his feet. His vision was blurry, but he could see Meg rolling on the floor with the woman cop, trying to strangle her. The cop somehow kneed Meg on the stomach and got it off her, before looking for something on the floor…

And that’s when Dean realized they were done for. The cop was going to get her gun, and shoot Meg, and then finish him, and that’d be it. End of the road.

Dammit, and the day had started so well.

That was one terrifying moment right there.

The next one, someone was towering over the cop, holding her gun with both hands, the cannon pressed to her forehead.

There was a second shot.

The cop’s body hit the road; brains, and blood, and bits of bones splattered everywhere.

Dean had a fraction of a second to be shocked before the darkness swallowed him down.

 

* * *

 

He woke up with a shout. Someone was pouring a burning liquid on his back, and some very strong hands were holding him against a mattress.

“Get him steady!” a voice said. “The bullet’s still in!”

Meg. Meg was alive.

He opened his mouth to express his relief, but all that came out was a hot, sour stream of barf. He was trembling so violently he could feel the bed vibrating underneath him.

“This isn’t working,” a second, unknown voice was saying now. “You need to tranquilize him.”

“And let you take out the fucking thing?”

“What options do you have?”

There was some shifting around him, and then a pair of delicate, small hands came to rest on his cheeks. Dean looked up, his eyes misty from the hurt. He could barely make out her features among the tears.

“Baby,” she said. She never called him that. “Baby, I need you to calm down. Breathe deep. Remember Poughkeepsie? This is like Poughkeepsie.”

Dean remembered Poughkeepsie. Sam had picked up a fight with the wrong guy and ended up with a gunshot wound on the in the gut. The other guy had ended sliced into pieces once they got their hands on him.

“Good times,” Dean said, but he wasn’t sure the mumbling and groaning that he blurted transmitted that. So instead, he focused on taking as many gulps of air as he could. It wasn’t easy, since his lungs were ablaze, but after what felt like centuries, his body stopped shaking.

Meg looked up. “Okay.”

The other guy fucking stabbed him. Dean would have cried in frustration and anger if it wasn’t for a second heave of vomit reaching his throat. He fought against it, trying not to notice how they guy was rummaging inside his wound and how his hands were hanging useless above his head. They had handcuffed him to the bed. Well, fuck, that was ruined forever.

There was a wet pop, and the thing inside him was out. Finally.

“We’re going to stitch it now,” Meg was saying, still gently stroking his face. “It’ll be over soon. Dean. Dean? Can you hear me?”

He could hear her. She was just very, very far away…

 

* * *

 

When he opened his eyes again, his back still hurt him, but at least it was just a small area in the lower part. They had untied him and cleaned the vomit from the sheets. He had bandages all around his chest.

“Where are we?” he asked, but his voice sounded so faint he wasn’t sure anybody could hear him.

“In a motel some miles from where you were shot,” said the deep voice he’d heard before. “Meg is making sure the manager… doesn’t ask uncomfortable questions.”

So much for going under the radar. Dean tried to sit up, but decided that was a stupid idea, and let himself fall into the mattress again.

A man appeared in his line of vision. It took him a second or two to register who it was. Last time he had seen him, the guy was a whimpering mess as he locked him in the trunk of the car. Now he was all composed and standing still, with his shoulders steady and his back up straight, like a soldier waiting for orders. It was a sharp contrast with his bloodstained shirt and his messy dark hair.

“Right,” Dean said. “You’re the other guy, aren’t you? The one that’s not a completely spineless?”

The guy blinked, as if he had not understood the question.

“My name is Castiel,” he said, after a few awkward seconds.

“You shot the cop,” Dean remembered. “Why’d you do that?”

No answer. Before the silence got more unnerving, the door burst open, and Meg walked in, wiping her knife with a dirty towel.

“How are you?” she asked, and she seemed genuinely concerned as she approached Dean’s bed. It was a rare view on her face, and Dean wasn’t sure he liked it.

“I don’t know,” said Dean, trying to smile. “You’re the expert.”

“We got lucky,” she said. “Had that bitch aimed a little lower, you’d be paralyzed.”

“So you truly are a physician?” Castiel asked.

“A nurse,” Meg groaned.

She didn’t like to talk about it. Dean knew that back in the hospital where she worked before she ran into them, Meg had finished off dozens of terminal patients.

“It’s so easy,” she’d complained once. “You just stick the needle in; put a little bubble of air where there shouldn’t be, and boom! Dead. Nobody even raises an eyebrow because they were expecting them to die anyway. It’s boring.”

Dean was sure as hell thankful she hadn’t got bored at nurse school or whatever. Not so certain on where he stood on the crazy guy helping them out.

“And him?” Dean asked, with a head motion towards the guy.

Meg turned to him, and analyzed him for a second. Castiel was perfectly still, like he was expecting his verdict.

“He’s okay,” Meg said, finally. “He saved our lives. Helped me get you to safety. We owe him.”

Dean nodded. If Meg trusted him, that was good enough for him.

“I still don’t understand why, though,” she added.

“I did it for Dean,” Castiel declared, like that explained everything.

“Why?” Dean repeated. But it seemed like he was done talking. “Fine. Whatever. We need to get moving…”

“Woah, easy!” Meg warned him, as Dean pushed himself up.

A second later, Castiel was next to him, putting one of Dean’s arms around his neck and supporting all of his weight on his shoulders. Dean searched for Meg’s gaze, but she just shrugged, and grabbed Dean’s other arm. They helped him get to the door, and then across the parking lot.

Dean looked back at the motel. Maybe to take a mental picture of where he had been when he escaped Death so narrowly. It was nothing but an old building in shambles. The door of one of the rooms hanged from its hinges. The roof had several tiles missing. Besides the neon sign that announced the place still had vacancies available (which was obvious), everything was dark and silent. He imagined the owner in his office, with his throat promptly slashed, rotting in the middle of that abandoned ruin. All in all, Dean’s second birth place was desolated and bleak.

“This place could do with some redecorating,” he commented.

“I know,” said Meg, as they stopped next to a red truck (probably the owner’s) instead of going towards Norah’s car. “I already made some arrangements.”

She handed Dean his lighter.

“Oh, baby,” he said, moved. “You didn’t have to.”

“Of course I had to!” said Meg, with a bright smile. “You don’t get shot every day, do you?”

“You’re the best,” said Dean.

His hands weren’t all that steady, but he still managed to get a little dancing flame out. Jimmy… Castiel… whatever his name was, observed him with his head tilted in curiosity. Dean took a couple of steps forwards, until the familiar scent reached his nose. He leaned down, and felt the tickling heat on his fingertips as the little flame grazed the gasoline trail and danced away towards Norah's car. It was beautiful. Like a hungry animal, a predator looking for its prey.

Dean watched fascinated as the car was consumed away and then motel’s walls combusted in a glorious explosion that raised up higher and higher in the starless sky. Suddenly the night was lit up, like the sun had appeared hours earlier, and it filled his chest with joy to know he was the cause of such a bright display.

The other one thing Dean enjoyed the most was a roaring fire.


	4. You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison

Victor Henriksen’s face was an impenetrable mask. If he was displeased with Sam’s information, he refused to show it.

“Are you sure?” he asked, pointing at the photograph on the table again.

Sam shrugged, because he knew it would irritate Henriksen.

“Never seen the guy,” he said.

In fairness, he wasn’t lying. The first time he had seen Jimmy Novak’s face was when Henriksen visited him weeks ago, when Novak had disappeared, allegedly kidnapped by Meg and Dean. Sam had chuckled, and said that they would find the guy dead, if they found him at all. But now Henriksen was saying Novak was working with Dean and Meg, and Sam had to wonder if he was just pulling his leg. Why would they be running with a guy that looked like the biggest thing he had killed in his life was a mosquito?

Henriksen pushed another photograph towards him, so Sam could examine it under the dim light of the visitor’s room. It showed the burnt remains of what Sam deduced used to be a two-story building. Maybe a motel. God knew Sam Winchester had seen enough motels in his life to recognize them, even if they were as badly damaged as this one.

“This happened not ten miles from where the cops were killed,” he said. “Any idea if it could have been your brother?”

“Why, I don’t know, agent,” said Sam. “Let me just ask him through our secret psychic connection, and get back to you.”

Henriksen gnarled at him, and Sam grinned. He knew there was nothing the FBI agent would like more than push the needle inside Sam’s arm, but the Attorney General was convinced keeping Sam alive was necessary to catch Dean Winchester. Like Sam would ever rat him out like that.

But he needed to throw a bone to Henriksen, so he said:

“Details, agent. I’m gonna need some details.”

“The owner was found in his office,” said Henriksen. “Badly burnt, yet we could determine he was dead before the fire began. His throat was slashed.”

Sam forced himself not to have any sort of reaction, as he felt a stab of longing in his chest. Slashed throats and burnt bodies. Oh, those were the days.

“Gasoline was used as accelerant,” Henriksen continued. “There were also some cars destroyed. We suspect one may have been the one Dean and Masters stole in Idaho, but we’re still trying to confirm that.”

“If you have all the evidence so neatly stacked, then why are you asking my help, Victor?” said Sam, in his most calm tone of voice. He knew it drove the agent nuts when he treated him with such familiarity. And today he was decided to push all his buttons. It was boring in the cage, and Sam wasn’t about to pass up on any opportunity for entertainment.

“I want to know where they’re going,” Henriksen demanded. “They have a pattern. I know _you_ have a pattern. And I’m going to figure it out.”

“Well, good luck with that,” said Sam, with another shrug, while he pretended to be studying the photographs. “For now, you can rest assure this wasn’t Dean.”

“How’d you know that?” asked Henriksen. He was trying to hide it, but Sam knew he was discouraged by the news.

“It’s too clumsy. Too rush,” said Sam, moving the photographs like they were cards in a solitary game. “What you don’t understand about my brother, Victor, is that he isn’t a simple arsonist. He’s an artist. And he always stays to watch his work.”

“The place was isolated,” Henriksen said. “It burnt for hours before someone noticed.”

“Dean doesn’t use _gasoline_. It’s too vulgar,” Sam insisted. “Not his style.”

“Could have been Masters, then,” Henriksen suggested. “A gift for him. A token of her affection.”

Sam resisted the urge to bite the interior of his cheek, like he did when he was nervous. He had been thinking the same thing. Meg had done things like that in the past to cheer Dean up, but Sam couldn’t let Henriksen know that. So he snickered.

“You think that bitch would do that?” he said. “She doesn’t care about anyone but herself.”

“Maybe that’s how she was with you,” Henriksen said. “Maybe now that she’s running with your brother she realized which one of the Winchesters is really worth it. You know, the one who wasn’t dumb enough to get caught.”

Oh, so that was what this was. Henriksen was trying to make him jealous. If he hadn’t been trying to keep his bluff, Sam would have laughed out loud. It was incredibly all that Victor had got right about them, and also all that he got wrong.

In any case, Sam squinted and tried to look like Henriksen’s dig had actually affected him.

“It wasn’t them,” he declared. “You’re wasting your time.”

“What’s in South Dakota, Sam?” asked Henriksen. He was like a dog with a bone.

“Dirt. Meadows,” Sam said, indifferent. “Mount Rushmore.”

“The place where you first met Ruby Cassidy,” said Henriksen.

“Was it, now? I don’t remember,” said Sam, shaking his head slightly. “She was an awful fuck.”

“She ran with you for ten months before you killed her and dumped her body in the middle of a road,” Henriksen reminded him.

Sam whistled, impressed. “Can’t believe it took me that long to get sick of her face.”

Henriksen gathered the pictures and put them back in the folder with a flip of his wrist. His lips were tight, and Sam realized he had pushed a bit too far.

“Come on, Victor,” he protested. “We’ve barely just started!”

“No. We’re done,” replied Henriksen, in the croak voice that indicated he was about to lose his patience. Sam had an ongoing internal bet with himself that one day he was going to say just the right thing to get Victor to punch him in the face.

“But let me be clear,” the agent added, as he stood up and walked around the table to stand closer to Sam. “They’re going to make a mistake. Sooner or later, Masters’ bound to get bored, just like you get bored in here.”

Sam remained quiet, as Victor leaned in closer to whisper threateningly in his ear.

“And when they do, I’m going to catch them,” he continued. “And I’m going to make sure all of you hang.”

“I have to give it to you, Victor,” said Sam, calmly. “You are incredibly ambitious.”

Henriksen left without a reply, so Sam didn’t know whether to call this a victory or not. He left it at a draw. The door opened and the guard walked in. Sam suppressed a grimace when he saw who it was.

“Hello, Nick,” he said, while they guided him out of the visitor’s room. “How’s the missus?”

Nick stared at him with icy blue eyes, and Sam offered him his widest smile. The guard had a bad reputation among the inmates. They said if you wanted something from the outside, he was the man to go, but you had to be prepared to pay the price. The price could be anything from something as simple as a handjob, to a substantial bribe, if your family could put it together. Most of the prisoners avoided making deals with him, though. They called him “Lucifer”, but never to his face. They always looked down and pretended to be busy when he passed them by. They danger of waking up hanging by your sheets or finding yourself with a bashed skull if you crossed him was very real.

Sam never had much regard for danger anyway.

“Feeling lucky, Winchester?” asked Nick. He never bothered to hide his contempt for Sam. He had been trying to get Sam to fear him, which the killer found incredibly funny.

“Don’t be jealous, Nick,” Sam said. “I’m sure one of these days Victor it’s going to notice you, too.”

Nick pushed him inside his cell (with a little more force than was strictly necessary), and shut the door.

“You still need some respect lessons, I see,” he said. “I’ll get you in time, Winchester.”

“Of course you will,” said Sam, ostensibly rolling his eyes. “I’ll just sit here and wait.”

Nick walked away as Sam turned around. Kevin Tran, his cellmate, put down his book and blinked a couple of times.

“So?” he asked. “How’d it go?”

Sam waited until he was sure Nick had left the hall, and then started cracking up uncontrollably, with his back to the wall as he slowly slid down to the floor. He couldn’t help it. It was simply hilarious.

“They’re going back to Bobby’s cabin,” he told Kevin. “There’s no way they’ll find them there.”

“Cool,” said Kevin, and promptly went back to his book.

Sam watched his cellmate’s profile under the lights. He always had his nose in one book or the other, his slanted eyes squinted since he had broken his last pair of glasses.

Sam couldn’t deny he felt a certain fondness for him.

The first week he arrived, during lunch (he sat alone most of the time, with Nick, who was just beginning to understand he wasn’t as easily scared as the others, hovering over him in the distance), Kevin and another kid had sat on his table.

“Hello,” said the other kid, his blue eyes almost shinning with excitement. “Is it true you killed like, twelve people?”

Sam had examined them carefully, trying to determine what exactly they were looking for. They couldn’t be older than twenty, and Kevin looked even younger since he was so short. Sam was sure he could’ve manhandled him away from his table if he’d wanted to. He had barely spoken two words to Sam since they’ve been assigned to the same cell, and he avoided eye contact at all costs.

The unknown kid was staring at him with a certain adoration Sam recognized immediately. It was the same adoration that had lured several girls into dark alleys and seedy motels. And if there was a thing Sam was a sucker for, was adoration. He’d leaned on the table towards the kid.

“Those are the ones they could pin on me,” he’d said, his best grin on.

The blue-eyed kid looked like he was just having a religious experience, while Kevin had looked at Sam (maybe for the first time, _really_ looked at him) and smirked.

“Cool,” he’d said.

And that was it. Sam had decided that Kevin and Adam (the other kid) were his, and everybody else had backed off, because it wasn’t the smartest idea to mess with the 6 foot 4 serial killer with a dozen of bodies to his name.

“I only killed four,” Adam had told him later, in the yard, while Sam did some lifting and Kevin read. “I shot a couple more, but they managed to save them.”

It turned out Adam had walked one day into his college classroom with his dad’s semi-automatic gun, and opened fire. He’d planned to put the gun to his mouth, but the cops got to him later.

“Why’d you do it?” asked Sam, as he indicated him to put more weight on the bar.

“I was bummed about finals,” said Adam, with a shrug.

“No, I mean, why a gun?” asked Sam. “They’re useful, but they’re just so… impersonal.”

Kevin snorted behind his book.

“Ask him how many he killed,” Adam indicated him, with the same excited smile he had when he’d first approached Sam.

“How many you killed, tough guy?” said Sam, expecting it to be a fairly low number.

Kevin put down his book, and looked at him, nothing but pride in his big brown eyes. “Thirty-six,” he said. “The dorms needed redecoration.”

Kevin had put together a bomb with chemical elements stolen from the college’s laboratory and blown up an entire wing, which, according to federal laws, made him a sort of terrorist. Sam found that sidesplitting.

“You’d get along with my brother,” he said, when he could stop laughing. “He likes setting things on fire too.”

“You think you’ll see him again?” asked Adam.

“Not likely,” said Sam, as he grabbed the bar again. “Dean’s too smart. They’re not gonna catch him unless he’s dead.”

Two years later, Sam still thought the same.

Bobby’s cabin was in the middle of a rural area, so isolated you couldn’t even find it by chance. (A couple had, once. Sam wondered if the tree they had planted over their bodies was still standing). If Dean and Meg were going there, it meant he wouldn’t have news of them for a while. Maybe they’d dispose of the Novak guy in a special way, and then fuck on the couch in front of the chimney.

Sam liked to think about that now and then: Dean and Meg still free and running through the country, sometimes making a killing so notorious that Henriksen would come to him, and then Sam knew they were still out there.

“Scoot,” he said, and Kevin did without even looking up from his book. Sam kicked off his shoes and slid under the covers. “What’s so interesting about that book?” he asked, a little offended the kid didn’t even try to imitate him.

“Taxidermy,” said Kevin, showing Sam a picture of a beaver opened in canal. In the next page, the beaver was stuffed on a shelf. “Thought I’ll need a hobby when I get out of here.”

“Of course,” Sam smiled.

The lights went off, and Kevin curled up against him, his short black hair tickling Sam’s nose. Sam thought how nice it would be if he could have Adam there as well, and how cute it was they both still talked about getting out. Sam had already made peace with the fact he was going to rot in there.

It wasn't all that bad, though. He had his boys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long ass title. It's a reference to the long ass name of the My Chemical Romance's song.


	5. Devotion

Castiel opened his eyes to a dimly lit room. The last vestiges of a headache were rapidly disappearing in the back of his mind, and his whole body ached. He had a wrist hanging above his head, but at least they’d let his other arm free. It was a clear progress from the time he’d woken up with arms and legs both cuffed to the bedframe.

Slowly, he sat up on the mattress and rubbed his face. His left eye was swollen and when he moved his tongue, a little piece of teeth fell on it. Castiel spat it and waited. They sure had heard him move, and would be coming to check on him any second now.

Sure enough, the door creaked after a couple of minutes, and Dean walked in with a tray, but halted at a prudent distance from the other man.

“Which one are you?” he asked.

“I’m Castiel.”

A looked of relief appeared on Dean’s face, and then was swiftly replaced by the cocky grin Castiel had come to know.

“Buddy, we thought we lost you for good,” he said. He left the tray on the floor, and looked for the keys inside his jacket.

“How long was I gone?” asked Castiel, rubbing his wrist as soon as it was released.

“A couple of days,” said Dean. “Jimmy got difficult. He tried to hit Meg and I have to knock him out.”

“That explains this,” said Castiel, pointing as his eye.

“Sorry about it,” said Dean, sitting by his side and putting the tray on his lap. “There was no way to be delicate.”

Castiel sank the fork in the meat before him, and cut it meticulously, before putting it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, closing his eyes to taste it better.

“This is delicious, Dean,” he praised him. As always, Dean looked down and made a gesture with his hand, like he was trying to indicate he didn’t deserve the compliment. Before Castiel could insist, Dean spoke again:

“Listen, I gotta run some errands in town,” he said. “I need you to promise me you won’t switch until I get back.”

Castiel put the knife and fork away, and stared directly into Dean’s green eyes.

“I can’t always control it,” he said. “You know that.”

“Yeah, but could you at least try?” Dean asked him. “I don’t want to leave Meg alone with the ugliest part of you.”

Castiel meant to argue that Jimmy was actually the functional part of him, the one that hadn’t fallen in every sense of the word, but he quietly nodded instead. Dean smiled like a child who had just been promised his favorite meal and patted his shoulder.

“Thank you, Cas,” he said, and stood up. “Finish your meal. You didn’t get much while Jimmy was in charge.”

Castiel obediently went back to his dinner (or lunch? It was impossible to tell what time it was through the board up window.). His sense of time wasn’t reliable, but he calculated it was over two months now since the shooting on the side road and the fire in the motel.

At first he’d travelled handcuffed or in the trunk, like they still expected him to turn on them at any given moment. Then, as they burnt mile after mile in the general direction of South Dakota (Castiel had got that from the few glimpses of the road he’d stolen when they took him out to feed him and let him relieve himself), they had allowed him to stay in the backseat, with a dirty trench coat they didn’t say where they’d got covering his wrists in case another cop decided to stop them. That hadn’t happened, fortunately.

“Well, we couldn’t have that much bad luck twice in a row,” Dean had commented.

Finally, they’d arrived to an old cabin in a heavily isolated area. Meg had informed him the closest neighbor was a little over sixty miles down the road in one direction, and the Black Hills National Forest most desolated area sixty miles in the other direction. She hadn’t pointed which one was each. It didn’t matter. Castiel wasn’t planning on escaping.

That night, they’d installed him in the same room he now was, and they’d had a lengthy conversation in the living room. Castiel had caught fragments of it as he sat very quietly on the bed.

“Well, you said it yourself, we can’t gank him,” Dean had said. “He saved us.”

“ _Castiel_ did,” Meg had specified. “And don’t get me wrong, I like him too. But there’s no guarantee he’s _always_ going to be Castiel.”

There had been whispers for a long while. Castiel had suspected they were designing some sort of contingency plan. He’d felt the impulse to come down and tell them it didn’t matter. He would accept their decision with the same quiet resignation he’d accepted the absurdity of his existence. Before he could, there were some steps on the stairs and Dean had opened his door and asked him if he was hungry.

And so the days had gone on quietly. Except for the times when Jimmy took over, Castiel had spent most of his time busying himself with the content of the several books the killers had stashed along the years. There were no Bibles. Castiel checked.

It was strange how none of them question his presence there. Castiel was sure if he’d made any escape attempt (like Jimmy had several times, apparently), they wouldn’t be so tolerant. But as soon as he stayed quiet, none of them seemed too eager to get rid of him. They even made small talk sometimes. Meg still kept a wary eye on him, but Dean had eventually warmed up to him. Castiel thought it’d started when he found him on the couch reading _Slaughterhouse Five_.

“How you liking that?” Dean had asked, almost casually.

“I find Pilgrim’s conception of free will to be hilariously bleak,” Castiel had said, drily, while turning the pages.

“Yeah,” Dean had laughed. “It’s my favorite book too.”

Castiel had looked up as Dean continued to move around the house, whistling like he didn’t have a worry in the world. How he’d understood that Castiel was enjoying the book immensely was beyond him. But he’d come to discover Dean understood him in a lot of aspects. He liked listen to Dean talk about the silliest things. He reveled in the familiarity Dean had come to adopt around him: the little touches, the nickname.

Castiel couldn’t quite explain the reasons that had led him to save Dean, not even to himself. But he didn’t regret it for a second.

He finished his meal, and went downstairs. He found Meg in the kitchen, washing the dishes with a very concentrated expression on her face, like it was the most important task in the entire universe. Cas had noticed Meg did that more and more lately: focusing on something small, analyzing each part of it, doing it slowly and carefully as the whole world depended on it.

“What?” she snapped at him when she him standing in the kitchen with the tray. “Got your noodles back in order?”

Castiel was tempted to ask what did flour paste product have to with his disturbed mind, but he decided against it. On top of the monomania, Meg was growing more and more irritable by the hour. He took a step towards the sink, but Meg took the tray out of his hands and started scrubbing vigorously. Castiel noted several finger-shaped bruises on her forearm.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“You weren’t you,” Meg groaned, and made a dismissive gesture.

Castiel didn’t move. She ignored him for several minutes, until she ran out of cutlery to wash.

“What do you want?” she asked finally.

“Do you know what time Dean will be returning from town?” he asked.

“Beats me,” she said, with a shrug. “I don’t even know why he went there in the first place.”

With that, she went to the cleaning cupboard and put on a couple of rubber gloves, which indicated she was going to clean the cabin again, even though she had done that less than two days ago and there wasn’t a single speck of dust anywhere. Castiel took it his presence would be a hinder to her, so he selected a new book from the shelves, and disappear in his room for the next couple of hours.

 

* * *

 

Dean came back around sundown. Castiel heard his car parking in the entryway, and he immediately put the book down and went downstairs, but Dean didn’t come into the house immediately. He saw him pass the window with a heavy burlap sack thrown over his shoulder, and was thinking about going to help him with whatever it was when Meg emerged from the basement, with cobwebs in her hair and a duster in her hand.

“What?” she asked again.

“Dean is back,” Castiel informed her.

“Oh, good,” Meg said, but her frown contradicted her. “Maybe he can take five minutes of his idling around and help down here…”

Like he had heard her, Dean walked in through the backdoor.

“Hey, baby,” he greeted her with his most radiant grin. “I’ve got something for you.”

“Well, what is it?” asked Meg.

“It’s here in the backyard,” Dean said, his smile not wavering even a little under Meg’s murderous glare. “Come and see.”

Meg huffed, exasperated, but she took her gloves and followed him anyway. Castiel did as well, unsure of what to expect if he stayed behind. They walked in silence for a long while, up until the line of trees that marked the end of the property. The sun had completely sunk by then and the backyard was pitch dark, so it took Castiel a moment to realize what was the writhing bulge hanging from one of the thickest brunches. When he did, his breath got caught in his throat as Meg squealed with delight.

“Where did you find it?” she asked, and the pronoun sent a shiver down Cas’ spine.

“Truck stop,” said Dean. “He thought I was a lot lizard.”

Meg’s smile disappeared just as fast as it had shown up, and she shot Dean a look of concern.

“Don’t worry, nobody saw me,” he calmed her down, and then reached inside his jacket to pull out the knife Castiel had seen him toy with sometimes. “I knew you were going out of your mind. So, here. Enjoy it,” he said, putting the knife in her hand, and kissing her in the forehead.

The man hanging upside down yelped, but he was heavily muzzled. Meg looked like a child on Christmas morning as she walked up to him, and gave him her biggest smile.

“Alright, tough guy,” Meg smiled, and maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, but Castiel could have sworn her eyes had gone completely black under the faint starlight. “Where do we begin?”

There was ripping of clothes, and then Meg was caressing the man’s bare chest with the blade, licking her lips eagerly. Dean put a hand on Cas’ shoulder, and delicately pulled him away back to the house.

“Let’s go,” he told him. “This’ gonna get messy.”

Cas was tempted to look back, but resisted. He knew there was nothing there that he’d like to see.

“Well, aren’t you going to start?” asked Dean, as he opened the fridge.

“Start what?” asked Castiel, confused.

“With the whole religious babbling,” Dean explained, opening a bottle of beer without making eye contact with Castiel. “Like you always do when Meg does or says something murder-y.”

Castiel said nothing. It was true that upon first meeting Meg he’d been under the illusion she was a demon, standing tall with blood on her hands and a manic smile in her face as she threatened Norah. And although he had been corrected since, he still thought Meg’s compulsion for killing was demonic in nature. He told this to Dean, who seemed to find it amusing.

“Why do you indulge her?” asked Castiel.

“’Cause if I don’t, she’s gonna go out there alone,” Dean said, simply. “And she’s gonna be reckless and put herself in danger. I can’t have that. I have to take care of her.”

“Why?” Castiel asked again. Dean’s smile disappeared. From the backyard, came a scream. Meg had apparently got bored of the muzzle.

“Because it’s the last thing Sam told me to do before the pigs caught him,” he muttered.

“Sam,” Castiel repeated, like he was tasting the name. “Your brother?”

Dean gulped down the rest of the beer, and sat down on the couch by Cas’ side, as the yelling from the backyard became louder and louder.

“He always had a thing for pretty girls,” he told Cas. “Let’s see, there was Jessica… then Madison, Sarah, Amelia, Ruby… I’m sure there were more, but those are the ones I remember. He played the poor tortured soul, told ‘em I was the deranged one and he just wanted to get away from this life. He convinced them to run away with him. Then, after some time, he got bored of them, so he would ring and I would stage a guest appearance, and… well, that was when things got interesting."

Dean smirked, like he was remembering something very funny, but was sure Castiel wouldn’t get the joke.

“Then one day, he’s at this bar, minding his own business, and suddenly he sees this guy dragging a stumbling girl to the back alley,” Dean continued. “He’s sure the guy’s gonna help himself, if you know what I mean. He never tolerated that sort of scum, so he follows them, quite sure he’s going to be the knight in shining armor… and he finds the guy with his throat slit so deep he was practically decapitated.” Dean ran a thumb across his own throat, as if to illustrate a point. “And that’s how he met Meg,” he said. “It was love at first sight. She was as bloodthirsty as him, and she wasn’t even fazed when she found out…”

He didn’t finish. Instead, he took a swig of his beer. The man in the backyard was now sobbing for mercy, in a high pitch tone. Castiel had the impression Meg was forcing him to shout loud enough for them to hear on purpose.

“He was devoted to her,” Dean concluded.

“And you were devoted to your brother,” Cas pointed. Dean didn’t answer, so Castiel leaned over the couch and put a hesitating hand in his forearm. “But who’s devoted to you?”

“You coming onto me or something?” Dean asked, crooking an eyebrow. Castiel immediately backed down, and even moved away from him a bit.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

“Nah, man, it’s cool,” Dean shrugged. The man in the backyard had gone silent, but Castiel was pretty sure he was not dead yet. “Why am I even talking to you about these things?” Dean asked, suddenly. “What do you know? You’re just the figment of some guy’s imagination that went haywire. I mean, have you even done someone in before you decided to finish that pig?”

Castiel remained quiet for several seconds. Then, he muttered something, but it got drowned under a new series of bloodcurdling shrieks.

“What was that?” Dean asked, frowning in Castiel’s direction.

“I said I had,” Castiel declared, his shoulders straightened and his voice firm. “It was not my first killing.”


	6. Sob Stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mentions of child abuse and homophobia.

Naomi Reardon was a severe woman. No one in her life, not her late husband, not her runaway daughter, not his grandson, could remember seeing her smile. The lines on her face were a product of constant frowning, disapproval and authority. In her house, her word was law, and her law was God’s word.

“She was one of those persons who are full of hate, and use religion to canalize it,” Castiel told Dean. “They don’t care for the Lord’s commandment,  just as long as they give them an excuse to inflict that hate on someone. Not a true servant of God.”

“Yeah, I know the type,” said Dean, with a little nod.

For many years, the object of Naomi’s hate had been her daughter: because she wore skirts too short, because she smoke, because she had the wrong friends.

“At least that’s what I’ve come to understand,” Castiel continued. “I never knew Jimmy’s mother. She abandoned him short after he was born, when she was only fifteen years old. Jimmy liked to believe she meant to come back for him one day, but she never did. He never even knew her name, since Naomi refused to pronounce it.”

“So you’re telling me you… I mean, Jimmy, grew up with this nutjob lady?” asked Dean.

“Indeed,” Castiel nodded. “As you can imagine, it wasn’t a pleasant childhood.”

Jimmy was forced to kneel on frozen beans every night and say his prayers. If Naomi considered he’d prayed too fast, she would make him stay there for an extra hour. She would bath him in practically boiling water in order to “cleanse him” of the sin of being a bastard born out of wedlock. If Jimmy cried (as he had done plenty of times), she would beat him with a wooden spoon, muttering he was just as rebellious as his mother and trying to inflict the fear of God on him. If Jimmy did anything she didn’t approve of, which was terribly easy, she’d find out, even if it had been at school or with the few friends he had in the neighborhood. She had eyes everywhere, and would punish her grandson in the most unusually creative ways. Her cruelty knew no limits, and her control over Jimmy’s life was tyrannical and inescapable.

“Jimmy sought relief in the only thing that seemed to please Naomi: his study of religion,” Castiel said. “He would read the Bible and memorize long passages. He would spend what little money he was allowed to have on books about the Lord and His angels. In one of those books was where he found my name.”

Castiel was the Angel of Thursdays, and since Jimmy was born on a Thursday, he chose him to be his Guardian Angel. He’d pray to him every day, as he underwent Naomi’s daily tortures, he would play (when he was allowed to) that he was Castiel leading a garrison of angels into battle against demons. Of course, when Naomi found out, Jimmy was locked away in the cleaning wardrobe for five hours, so he could reflect upon the arrogance of comparing himself with a creature of God.

“Okay,” Dean took a swig of his beer. The telling was gruesome, and Castiel neutral expression made it even worse. “So when did you gank this bitch? Because you did, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Castiel confessed. “Naomi was the first of the three persons I killed.”

When Jimmy turned twelve, the violence escalated. The boiling hot baths became freezing cold and Naomi somehow got a whip she used to remind Jimmy his body was a source of sin, and that his lust would lose him like it had lost his mother. Jimmy would endure it because he didn’t know better, because he thought Naomi did it for his own good, to save his soul from the clutches of Hell. That even if he was an insignificant creature who didn’t deserve God’s love, he knew Castiel, his angel, was there to shield him from the worst and guide him down a path of righteousness.

“That was around the time Jimmy became friends with an older boy named Balthazar,” Castiel continued. A little smirk appeared on his face, so small Dean wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been paying so much attention to him. “He was fifteen and the pastor’s son, and he understood the Lord’s teachings far better than Naomi. He helped with Sunday school, and he talked about love and compassion. He was very charming, and Jimmy, well…”

“Jimmy caught the hots for him,” Dean guessed.

“It was an innocent child’s crush,” Castiel said. “But yes, it was the first time Jimmy experienced attraction towards somebody. Naomi realized, because of course she would notice the smallest of changes in the child she had been controlling since he was a baby.”

“Can’t imagine she took it well.”

“Homosexuality was, in her opinion, the pinnacle of all sins,” Castiel said. “So, no. She didn’t take it well.”

It started innocuous enough. Jimmy plucked a flower from the church yard and gave it to Balthazar at the end of Sunday school. The older boy smiled and accepted it, and Jimmy flushed and stared at his shoes. It was a sunny day in the middle of the summer, and Jimmy was thankful for the green grass and the blue skies and his friend Balthazar who didn’t talk down to him or reminded him he was unworthy. What he didn’t know was that Naomi saw the whole thing.

She was quiet on the way home, and she held onto Jimmy’s hand a little too tight, but that wasn’t unusual. What was new, though, was the way she slammed the door behind them and jumped over Jimmy with her eyes glistening with fury.

“She grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him, screaming at him he was a pervert and a scumbag,” Castiel told Dean, as he started lifting his sleeve. “Then she dragged him to the kitchen, put a knife over the stove and used it to burn him.”

He showed Dean the scar. It was a vertical pink line that went down Castiel’s forearm, from his inner elbow until near his wrist, barely raised over his white skin. Dean stared at it for a few seconds. Scars and body modifications had always fascinating him, and he couldn’t resist the urge to run his index fingers over it. Castiel let him, but shuddered when the killer’s fingers reached the end of it.

“Must have hurt like a bitch,” Dean commented.

“It hurt so badly Jimmy disappeared completely for the first time,” Castiel told him. “And I took over. That is the first clear memory I have: a seething pain through my arm, Naomi holding my wrist so tight I thought she was going to break it, screaming at me I was an evil that should be erased from the face of the Earth.”

“Wait, but if that’s the first you remember,” Dean interrupted him. “How do you know all the things you’ve told me?”

“I have always been a part of Jimmy,” Castiel explained. “I’ve always shared his consciousness, his memories. I shared his pain, his fear. But when Naomi burned him, Jimmy retreated inside himself. And I took a life on my own.”

“So you’re telling me Jimmy pretended so hard he was you he actually  _became_  you?” Dean asked.

“That would be the simplest way to put it, yes.”

Castiel didn’t know any of that back then. The awareness of himself he gained came with the years and Jimmy’s adulthood. Back then, he truly believed he was an angel of the Lord sent to protect that poor boy. He escaped Naomi’s gripped and ran upstairs, with Naomi shouting and following him closely. When he reached the top of the staircase, he turned to confront her.

“It was so easy, really,” said Castiel. “I didn’t even have to push.”

She broke her neck on the fourth or fifth step. And that cracking sound snapped Jimmy back. He never knew what happened. He didn’t remember. He just thought his grandmother had stumbled and fallen down. It wasn’t until much later that he started putting the pieces together and fearing Castiel, but in that moment, what he did was call 911. Social Services took him and a little later, the Novak family adopted him. They were lovely people, religious, but not as zealot as Naomi. Jimmy grew happy with them and started to forget all the terrible things his grandmother had put him through.

“But I remembered,” said Castiel.

“Well, that bitch had it coming,” said Dean. His bottle of beer had long since emptied, but he still held it in his hand, like he wouldn’t know what to do with them otherwise. “I’m guessing that’s not the end of it, though.”

“No,” Castiel confessed. “No, it isn’t.”

Jimmy finished school, went to college, met a woman named Amelia whom he fell in love with and married. He became a sales provider, and had a daughter they called Claire. A happy, apple pie life. Every now and then he got weird headaches, and his wife would tell him he looked lost for some minutes, like he didn’t know what he was doing there. Jimmy suspected it was his angel checking in on him, but he ignored it or repressed it. For many years, there was no need for Castiel’s presence.

“My existence is fairly ridiculous when you think about it,” Castiel told Dean. “I am, as you said, the figment of a broken boy’s imagination. And yet I have thoughts on my own, I have a will on my own that does not match his. Emotions he doesn’t feel. Does that make me real?”

“I dunno, Cas,” Dean answered. “You seem pretty real to me. I mean, it’s like Meg said: the other guy barely has some fight in him. All he does when he shows up is screaming and kicking. I mean, I’m sorry for what he went through and shit, but… yeah, I’d still rather have you. I don’t even know why you are here, but I’d still take you any day.”

Castiel blinked, and Dean realized just how slushy what he said was. But Castiel made no further comment, and Dean cleared his throat.

“So what happened to the kid and the missus?”

Claire was coming home from school one day (it was a Thursday, oddly enough), and she was about to cross the street, like she had done thousandths of times before, like she still would’ve if a guy named Victor Rogers hadn’t decided it was five o’clock somewhere and chugged down some shots of whiskey with lunch. By the time he saw the nine year old girl in his way, it was too late. He not only ran over her, he squashed her with the front tires, and then dragged her with the rear wheels for a couple of yards before crashing against a stop sign.

“Claire was alive and in pain for several minutes,” Castiel told him. “And everything in Jimmy’s life started falling apart the moment she died.”

Rogers had too much money and too many good friends in the DA’s office to even go to jail. Amelia spiraled down in a terrible depression the day he walked free, and Jimmy couldn’t do anything to help her because he was unsure how to deal with his own sorrow. Their marriage became one continuous blame game, and Amelia would get aggressive: she’d scratch Jimmy’s face, tell him if he hadn’t been so busy at work, he could have picked up Claire instead of letting her walk. He never reacted. He just held her until she calmed down.

“Did he now?” Dean asked, with a crooked eyebrow.

“She could never tell the difference anyway,” Castiel shrugged. “Jimmy still hoped she would get better, that she’d find consolation in God or somewhere… but the day she pushed him towards the stove and threatened him with a knife… well, the scenario was all too familiar.”

“ _You_ reacted,” Dean guessed.

“When I snapped her neck, I did it out of mercy,” Castiel said. He looked sad, like he regretted it, and Dean couldn’t help but to think that he’d come up with that excuse later. “Her grief was too great a burden. I made it quick, and then buried her in the backyard, under her favorite tree. Jimmy realized what he… what _I_ had done and he started running.”

It wasn’t that hard: he just told their neighbors they were moving out (perfectly understandable, after the tragedy they’d suffered), and one day left Pontiac, Illinois, without looking back. None of them had much of a family, and as far as Castiel knew, to this day nobody had reported Amelia’s disappearance. They bounced from one place to another, until Jimmy learned the frequency of his headaches and how to handle them. At which point, they’d established in Rexford, Idaho.

“And the third one?”

Castiel looked at him, squinting in confusion.

“You said you’d killed three people before the cop,” Dean reminded him.

“Ah, yes. Victor Rogers,” Castiel said. “He was alive and in pain for several minutes, too.”

Dean chuckled to himself, while Castiel stared at him, like he wondered what was so funny.

“So each of your murders has been for a good cause, is what you’re saying,” Dean pointed, finally. “Then why the cop? Why did you save me? You knew from the moment you saw me at that grocery shop I was no good.”

Castiel looked at him with his blue eyes glistening, as if he was asking _‘Isn’t it obvious?’_

“You didn’t kill Norah,” he explained, finally. “You easily could have, but you didn’t. So even if you see yourself as guilty for the death your brother and Meg have brought upon, you’re still a good man, Dean.”

Dean shuffled on the couch, uncomfortable. “Well, she had a kid,” he justified himself. “You don’t know how many times I’ve heard the ‘I have children’ plea, and how many times it turned out to be bullshit. But when it is true, I just can’t… I mean, my mom died when I was young, and look how that turned out for me.”

“Your mother died?” Castiel asked, and Dean brushed it off with a shrug, because in his opinion, there had been too much touchy-feely conversation for one afternoon.

“We all have sob stories,” he said. “Ain’t it a little quiet?”

The trucker’s screams had long since stopped. A few seconds later, Meg walked in, with her hands bloody to the elbow and her shirt dripping red. Her eyes were red too, and Dean realized immediately she’d been crying.

“Hey, baby,” she smirked at Dean nonetheless. “Thank you. I needed that.”

“What’s the problem?” Dean asked, immediately walking up to her. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I just… well, I started carving him the way Sam taught me,” Meg explained, and wiped a single tear from her cheek. It was almost ridiculous how vulnerable she looked when she was still holding a knife and literally just bathed in her latest victim’s blood. “Guess I got a little sentimental.”

“Oh, come here,” Dean hugged her tight, and ran a finger through her hair. “It’s okay. Go take a shower, and I’ll get rid of him.”

“Thank you,” Meg muttered.

She wiped another tear, so now her face too was smeared with blood, but she didn’t seem to mind. She started making her way to the bathroom, when Castiel reached out to grab her forearm. Dean tensed, thinking he might need to punch the guy again, but Castiel merely looked her in the eye and stated:

“He is not dead.”

Dean was about to ask what he meant, with the amount of blood Meg had on her it was impossible the guy was still alive… but when Meg smiled, and leaned over Cas to kiss him in the forehead, Dean understood.

“No, he isn’t,” she said. “But he’s lost to us, so he might as well be. Thank you anyway.”

Cas didn’t let go of her hand for a couple more seconds, and when he did, he stared at the crimsom stain she left on his, like he was pondering a profound truth. Dean had never seen them act so tenderly towards each other, and it made his stomach flutter. He had flashes from the past, from when they had been a tree instead of two, and... no. Castiel would never go for that.

“You warming up to her now?” he asked Castiel.

“She might be demonic in nature,” Castiel insisted. “But if she is capable of such profound love for your brother…”

He didn’t finish. Dean nodded, with a sad smile, and made a gesture for Castiel to follow him.

“Come, help me out,” he said.

“Why do you need my help?” asked Castiel, frowning.

“I don’t,” Dean admitted. “But I figure I owe you a sob story.”


	7. Deals With the Devil

Adam moaned softly as Kevin pushed him against the wall and slid a hand down his pants.

“We don’t have much time,” he complained, as the other boy left a trail of kisses on his neck. “Where’s Sam?”

“Told me to start without him,” Kevin muttered. “Said he wants us all ready for him.”

“Teasing bastard,” Adam complained, and Kevin laughed as he kneeled in front of him.

“You’re already so hard,” Kevin commented, as he delicately took Adam’s cock out.

“Been thinking about this all day,” Adam confessed, and he gasped when Kevin started licking the tip. “You know with that bastard of my cellmate who tells me to avoid impure thoughts… I was never good at following that sort of advice… religious nutjob…”

Kevin giggled around his dick, and the vibration sent a shiver down Adam’s spine. The taller boy sank his fingers in Kevin’s hair, and pushed him closer so he could fuck his mouth properly…

“Well, well,” a voice boomed across the hallway. “What are you boys doing here?”

Kevin almost choked, as Adam rapidly pulled his pants up. It was no use. His hard-on was still clearly visible through them, to Lucifer’s amusement.

“You shouldn’t be roaming the halls so close to lockdown,” he warned them, crooking an eyebrow. There were two other guards standing close behind him. They were outnumbered.

“It’s still early,” Adam pointed. By his side, Kevin grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He was trying to warn him to stay quiet. Sam would be there at any moment. They wouldn’t dare mess with Sam…

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Lucifer asked, taking a step closer to them. “Did I give you permission to speak?”

Adam didn’t answer, but he made the mistake of clenching his jaw and stare at the guard right in the eye. That was all the provocation he needed. Lucifer took out the nightstick, and with a wide swing, he hit Adam in the face so hard the boy took several steps backwards. His hand slipped out of Kevin’s.

“You need to learn some respect, you insolent little shit,” Lucifer muttered, his nostrils trembling with rage. “Well, no wonder with the kind of scumbag you meddle with. Has Winchester told you what he did with his toys when he got bored with them?”

“Well, we don’t talk much you see,” Adam managed to show Lucifer a bloody smile. “It’s kinda hard when we’re feeding each other our cocks.”

“You disgusting faggot!” Lucifer shouted, raising his nightstick again.

“Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that,” Adam continued. “That’s why you got it out for Sam, right? Because he wouldn’t suck you off…”

This time the hit was so hard Kevin her Adam’s jaw cracking as he fell to the ground.

“No! Stop!” he screamed, and tried to take a step, but the other two guards grabbed his arms so he wouldn’t move. “Stop!”

“Shut him up!” Lucifer ordered, turning back to Adam. Kevin struggled to get away, but the guards were much stronger. One of them caught his face in a claw-like hand, and before the boy could scream again, his head was getting hit against the prison walls, over and over and over…

 

* * *

 

Someone was shaking him by the shoulders and calling his name. Kevin’s head hurt like it was about to split into two, and there was a metallic taste in his mouth.

“Kevin!” the voice called him again. “Kevin, please, wake up…”

Kevin recognized the voice. It was Sam. Sam was there. Everything would be alright now. He forced his eyes open, and to blink several times so the killer’s face would stop looking so blurry.

“Sam,” he muttered, as the images of what had happened started flooding back in his brain. “They were here… Lucifer and two other guys… Adam…”

Adam. Adam had been on the floor, with Lucifer towering over him before everything went black. Oh, God, he hoped he was okay. He had to be okay. He tried to turn his head, but Sam held him against his chest.

“Don’t look,” he said. “Don’t look, Kevin.”

“Why?” Kevin asked, with panic starting to tear through his heart. “Where is him?”

Sam’s embrace tightened, as rushed steps came their way.

“I told you!” Lucifer’s voice came, but his tone was very different from the one he’d used before. High-pitched. Fake. “I tried to help that poor boy, but there was nothing I could do!”

“Oh, my God,” someone muttered.

“Let him go!” another person said. He sounded threatening. “Let go off him, or I swear…”

Sam’s chest rumbled with a deep comforting sound, and Kevin realized he was laughing. Not his usual, amused chuckled, but a mirthless, hollow sound that made Kevin’s hair stand to attention.

“You’re all gonna pay for this,” Sam said. His voice didn’t have any special inflection to it, like he was stating a mere fact about the weather.

“Let go off Tran, Winchester,” the same voice than before repeated. “Now.”

Sam took his time to obey. First he put his lips on Kevin’s head, right where a lump was starting to emerge.

“Listen, Kev,” he whispered. “Things are gonna get a bit messy now.”

“Can I help you?” Kevin asked in the same tone. The guards were urging Sam to release him again, but they both ignored them.

“No,” said Sam, firmly. “No, you stay out of it, okay? Alright,” he added louder. “We’re standing up now,” he announced, and he helped Kevin get on his feet again. The boy still had his face buried against Sam. “You go stay next to the wall,” Sam kept instructing him. “And don’t move, okay? No matter what you see. Promise me.”

“I promise,” said Kevin, and he tried to make his voice sound firmer than he felt.

“Last warning, Winchester,” said the voice. “Let… go…”

Sam pushed him away, and Kevin stumbled until his back hit the wall. There were people screaming, and he could see Sam running towards them, waving his arms to get them off like they were nothing but annoying mosquitoes. Kevin knew immediately who he was looking for.

Before the other three guards could do anything to stop him, Sam broke through their siege and something shone silver in his hand before he jabbed Lucifer’s neck with it. The guard’s eyes open wide in surprise, like he couldn’t believe Sam had actually dared to do that. The blood sprinkled from his neck as the other three guards took out their nightsticks and the blows started to rain down on Sam. Kevin bit his tongue hard not to scream again, and looked away.

It was the worst thing he could have done.

Adam was lying in the middle of a pool of blood, with his throat slashed and his blue eyes open, but lifeless. Kevin suspected he was gone, but the confirmation made his knees tremble.

“Adam?” he called him, ignoring the mayhem just a few meters away from him. “Adam…”

He kneeled next to his friend, and took his hand, which laid limp and lifeless between his fingers. Adam was still warm, and Kevin rubbed his fingers against Adam’s skin trying to keep it that way. He called his name again. He felt like his head had detached from his body, and was floating away freely, as everything around him became blurry. It took him several seconds to realize it was because his eyes were filling up with tears.

The scandal was over now, and someone was pulling him by the arm, ordering him to stand up. Kevin ignored them, until the pull became more violent and he had no option but to let them haul him back to his feet and drag him away from Adam. He looked around. The third guard was next to Lucifer, with his hands over the wound, but the blood kept slipping through his fingers, and Lucifer’s body was convulsing. The guard was doing something very strange, talking with his hand. It was only when he was out of his sight that Kevin realized he must have been calling for an ambulance.

“Where’s Sam?” he asked the guard, as he threw him back in Kevin’s cell. “Where’s Sam?”

“Solitary,” the guard muttered. Kevin stared at him, and put his face between the bars. The guard took several steps back.

“You’re one of them,” Kevin said.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said the guard.

“You helped Lucifer kill Adam,” Kevin stated. He tried to make his tone as indifferent as Sam’s when he said they would pay. “I remember you.”

The guard hit the bars with his stick. “I’d better shut up if I was you, Tran,” he said. “You don’t remember shit.”

“I have photographic memory,” Kevin said. “I remember everything.”

“Watch out!” the guard screamed. “Or you will end up like Milligan, you hear me? Just like Milligan!”

The inmate held his gaze as the guard walked away rapidly. “R. Barnes,” his plaque said. Kevin had scared him. He forced a laugh out, because otherwise he would choke on his own tears. He didn’t feel at all scary, not with the bloodstains of his best friends in his clothes, not with the certainty he wouldn’t see Sam again.

He tried to sleep, but it was impossible to do so without Sam holding him tight, it was impossible with images that kept flashing every time he closed his eyes, and with the way his body shook. He fought against the tears, but he kept reliving what happened over and over. Why? Why did Adam have to provoke Lucifer? Why did he have to insult him? How the hell did the guard know where to find them? He hoped he was dead. He hoped Sam had sunk the blade so deep on his neck that he bled out very slowly and suffered every second of it.

At some point, the nausea overcame him and Kevin got up and ran to the bathroom to barf everything that was in his stomach. He still was wearing the same clothes, Adam’s now dried blood smeared across it, and he hugged it tight, like it somehow could conjure up his friend if he did.

“I know why you did it,” he said, as he shrank in the corner next to the toilet. Of course. Why couldn’t he see it before? “You did it so he would focus on you. He would have killed us both. He was trying to frame Sam.”

He didn’t know how long he stayed there. He was cold, but he didn’t have the strength to stand up and go back to his bed. At some, the door of his cell opened, and two men walked in and found him in the bathroom.

“Kevin?” called one of them. Kevin looked up. A black man was squatting next to him, and putting a tranquilizing hand on his shoulder. “Kevin, I’m Agent Victor Henriksen.”

“You’re the fed who’s trying to catch Sam’s brother,” said Kevin, automatically.

“I’m the investigator assigned to their case, yes,” said Henriksen. “I would like to ask you… I’m sorry, are you feeling alright?”

Kevin glanced at Henrkisen’s frowning face, and let out a strangled noise that could have been a laugh.

“Sam’s right,” he said. “You do make a lot of stupid questions.”

And then he vomited again, all over the fed’s shoes. He could have easily gone for the toilet, but he thought Sam would find this a lot funnier.

 

* * *

 

When Kevin woke up, it was nine in the morning. He knew because the first thing he saw was a clock on a white wall. He was in the emergency room, covered in several blankets and with a needle in his arm connecting him to an IV. He watched the drops falling, counting the seconds in between one and the other. Finally, after exactly three hundred and fifty two drops, with intervals of three to five seconds between each, someone walked in.

“Kevin?” Henriksen’s voice called him. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” he said. He barely recognized his own voice; it was so croaky and tired. He moved his head to look at the agent, and offered him an amused smile when he saw he had changed his elegant shoes for a pair of sneakers.

“You went into shock, Kevin,” Henriksen continued speaking softly, as he sat in the chair next to Kevin’s bed. “That means…”

“I know what it means,” Kevin interrupted him. “Adam explained it to me. He was doing pre-med before, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” Henriksen nodded. “You were very close to Adam, weren’t you?”

“He was my friend,” said Kevin, and he couldn’t believe just how easy it was to speak about him in past tense.

“How did you to get involved with Sam Winchester?” Henriksen asked.

Kevin shrugged. He wasn’t going to explain to Henriksen just how much of a butt of the joke they both were in there before they got close to Sam. How Sam had taken care of them, how he had disarmed all of their prejudices, and showed them there was nothing wrong with getting the affection they so desperately craved from each other.

“Where’s Sam?” Kevin asked instead. “Can I speak to him?”

“Sam is in solitary confinement,” Henriksen told him. “He can’t speak with anyone for the moment.”

“But you talked to him, didn’t you?” Kevin deduced. Sam used to joke Henriksen had a crush on him, that he always looked for him first whenever he came around.

“He says he attacked both Adam and Nick Pellegrino,” Henriksen said. “He said Adam was a good kid, but he was bored with him. And then he stabbed Nick because he was the one who was closer. Is that what happened?”

Kevin’s brain was working full throttle. Sam had taken the blame for Adam’s killing because he knew Nick didn’t do it alone. Because he wanted to take of those guards himself. He had to tell them who they were, but for them to be around, they had to keep their jobs there.

“Yes,” Kevin lied. “He’d told Adam he was bored of him, but he wouldn’t take the hint. He’d followed us everywhere. Sam lost his temper.”

“Adam was stabbed with a scalpel stolen from here,” Henriksen continued. “But Sam stabbed Nick with a knife from the kitchen. Do you have any idea how he came into possession of that?”

Kevin registered the phrasing, and realized Henriksen didn’t think Sam killed Adam. He shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Sam doesn’t tell me everything.”

"How did you hurt your head?"

"I don't know," Kevin repeated. "I don't remember. Must be the shock."

Henriksen nodded and stood up.

“If you can think of anything else…”

Kevin just stared at him with what he hoped was an indifferent expression. Henriksen was about to leave when Kevin called him again.

“What happened to Lucifer?”

“Guardsman Pellegrino died upon arriving to the hospital,” Henriksen informed him. “He had lost too much blood.”

“Oh,” Kevin said. He bit down the other word that came to his lips: _Good._


	8. Choices

The spade hit the ground rhythmically, over and over, for a couple of hours. Dean had unhanged the trucker’s body, and Castiel had felt the impulse of looking away, but his curiosity was bigger. Meg had carefully skinned his arms and legs, in a way that was painful, but not mortal, before slashing the inside of his mouth to give him an extended smile. But what killed him was certainly the wound in his stomach, that ran side to side over his navel and upside down from his chest to his groin, forming a grotesque cross. The man had probably bled out quite fast, and Castiel could see the earth soaked in his blood under the dawn’s early light. It was a gruesome display, for some reason he couldn’t look away.

“Sam used to gut them like that,” Dean commented, as he continued to dig the grave. “Meg prefers to go for the throat. They were always arguing about which way was bloodier.”

There was a sad note in his voice, and a nostalgic little smirk on his face. He had been quiet for a while, and Castiel figured he was just trying to find the right words.

“This… fascination for mutilating…” Castiel began, as he kneeled in from of the dead man. “I don’t understand where it comes from.”

“Well, I don’t know about Meg,” Dean said. “For what she’s told us, one day she just got bored of causing embolisms to old people and decided to go for something juicier. Sam and I… we grew up in this life.”

Castiel didn’t answer. Dean was obviously not used to sharing that story, so he simply waited for him to continue.

“Yeah, my mom died when we were kids,” Dean continued, still shoving earth aside. “And it… messed my dad in the head a little. He used to take us on hunting trips with him, all the time. That’s how we learned to kill.”

“Did you hunt… people?” Castiel asked.

“Not at first,” was Dean cryptic response. He avoided Castiel’s gaze, as he turned for the dead man. “I think that’s deep enough.”

Castiel helped him roll the body into the hole, and then Dean started throwing earth at him pensively. Castiel was about to ask him if he regretted telling him that. Dean stopped working the shovel, and stood very still, contemplating the rising sun like it contained some sort of secret.

“My dad wasn’t bad,” he said.

“I never said that,” Castiel pointed.

“No, but I know you’re thinking it,” Dean said. “I know Meg thinks so. I know all the girls Sam killed thought so. He wasn’t a bad guy, okay? He just… didn’t understand a lot of things.”

Castiel nodded, as Dean restarted his work.

“Dad used to leave us in this cabin sometimes,” Dean said, pointing at the cabin. “His friend Bobby lived here. We liked Bobby. He was a hunter too, and he understood a lot of things better than Dad did. ‘ _They need to be with kids their age, John,’_ he used to tell him. _‘They’re growing up. They need to be around some girls.’_ Dad would get angry and tell him we were _his_ kids and Bobby didn't get a saying. Then he’d load us in the car, and we wouldn’t see Bobby again for weeks on end. But we always came back.

“So one day, Dad and Bobby left for a hunt, but Sam and I thought it was lame, so we decided to stay. We wanted to be alone for a while.”

He stopped, biting the interior of his cheek.

“And Dad forgot his stupid knife.”

“What happened?” Castiel asked.

“Well, he came back for it,” Dean shrugged, like it was obvious. “And he caught us making out.”

Castiel blinked several times, like he was trying to assimilate what Dean was saying. The killer looked at him with a smile in his face, like he was daring Castiel to make any sort of comment about it.

“That freak you out?” he asked in the end.

“No,” Castiel said, sincerely. “I suppose it’s logical. It sounds like you were highly isolated growing up.”

“You got that right,” Dean said. “We moved around a lot. We never went to school or shit like that. We never made friends. It was just Sam and me, you know? We had this little world that was ours only, and not even Dad was allowed in. And then we hit puberty, and well… we got curious.”

He threw another scoop over the trucker’s body, which was practically out of sight by now.

“It never occurred to us there was anything wrong with it,” Dean continued. “But Dad threw a fit. I’d never seen him so furious before, I thought he’d tear me a new one.”

“Why you?” asked Castiel, frowning.

“Of course; it was my fault for corrupting Sammy,” Dean laughed. “I was the older, so everything was always my fault. I didn’t mind, as long as he left Sam alone. He backhanded me, and Sam jumped between us, screaming at him to leave me alone. Dad got his shotgun out (I think he might have been drunk), there was some struggling… and Dad got himself shot.”

Castiel didn’t ask who’d made the killing shot. He had the feeling it didn’t really matter. Dean hit the now completely covered grave with the flat side of the spade, and threw it over his shoulder as he started to make his way back to the tools’ shed. Castiel followed him closely.

“Bobby was out waiting, and he ran back in as soon as he heard the shot,” Dean continued, while he put away the spade. “Imagine the picture: Dad bleeding out on the floor, Sam crying his lungs out, and me hugging him and assuring him everything would be alright, although I had no idea how. I thought Bobby was going to kick us out, maybe call the police or something… but he was far better than that. He helped us clean the mess, took us in, and never made a comment on us sharing a bed.”

He stopped for a moment, as if to consider he needed to add something else.

“And when Sammy got bored with killing deer, he taught us how to cover our tracks,” he concluded.

“What happened to him?” Castiel asked.

“He ain’t around anymore,” Dean replied, somberly, opening the door to let Castiel back into the house. Castiel thought it was best not to inquire about it.

“Your brother and you…” he said, instead. “Your relationship, it… continued until you grew up?”

“Boy, you don’t know how it used to terrify the girls Sammy ran with when they found out the truth,” Dean laughed. “They’d all tell Sam that it wasn’t normal, but they could fix him. He’d simply had to choose them over me. And Sam never did, of course.”

“And Meg?” Castiel asked.

“I said ‘Why choose at all?’,” Meg’s voice came floating from the kitchen’s doorway.

“And that’s how we knew she was perfect,” Dean smile, and extended an arms towards her.

Meg walked up to him, and Dean hugged her close and kissed her on the forehead. Castiel understood it was his cue to leave, but before he could take a step further, Meg grabbed him by the wrist and stopped him in his tracks.

“You don't have to go,” she said. “Sit with us. Have some breakfast.”

Castiel looked at her big brown eyes, and then lowered his eyes to her forearm, where the fingers-shaped bruises still remained.

“We can deal with him if he shows up,” Dean calmed him.

Castiel wanted to explain to them that Jimmy wasn't the one they should be afraid of. That he was the dangerous one, the killer. But they already knew that. They didn't care.

Castiel wasn't supposed to want anything for himself. He was, and had always been, merely Jimmy’s protector. He wasn’t supposed to exist beyond that mission. That was the whole point of his presence. He wasn’t meant to be anything outside of that. He wasn’t even meant to stick around when the danger had passed, and he knew now he was in no danger with Meg and Dean.

But he was still there. And he didn’t want to leave.

It was a feeling he had never experienced before, a warmth in his chest and in the tip of his fingers intertwined with Meg's, and in his eyes when he met Dean's and the man smirked at him.

“Very well,” Castiel accepted. After all, the fact that he was still there meant that, to some extent, maybe Jimmy wanted that too.

 

* * *

 

The days after Adam’s death went by uneventfully. Sam was still in isolation, and there was no way to know when they’d bring him out of there. As soon as they left him out of the emergency room, Kevin had wandered into the aisle that led to the special cells a couple of times, but there were always one or two guards standing around. Henriksen had come back a couple of times, and Kevin had stuck to his story: Sam had killed both Adam and Lucifer. No, he didn’t know where Sam got the blades. No, he didn’t remember the whole thing. No, he wasn’t pulling Henriksen’s leg.

The agent had gritted his teeth, and told Kevin that if he helped out, he could talk to the Attorney General about his case. Kevin had smiled.

“Good luck with that,” he’d told Henriksen. “Nothing you can say can convince him that I’m not exactly where I should be.”

Not counting Henriksen’s visits, Kevin might as well have been in isolation himself. The guards avoided him. He’d crossed paths with R. Barnes again (he had come to know the “R” was for “Raphael”) and sometimes the man had looked like he wanted to talk to him, maybe make another threat, but in the end he always backed down. 

The other inmates avoided him, too. They looked away when Kevin caught them staring, and sometimes they muttered under their breaths something he couldn’t quite catch. Nobody sat with him. Nobody messed with him either. Kevin didn’t care. He missed his friends, and he was terrified for what Henriksen would do to Sam.

It wasn’t until three days after the incident, while he was sitting alone in the yard when someone other than Henriksen came to talk to him.

“You Tran?” the man asked.

Kevin looked up. The guard that was speaking to him had sharp features and penetrating green eyes. Kevin didn’t recognize the guard. His uniform claimed his name was ‘E. Gadreel.’ Kevin was tempted to ignore him, but at the last moment, he decided he didn’t need any more troubles, so he closed the book he was reading, and nodded.

“I’m Ezekiel,” the guard said. Then, without any warning, he grabbed Kevin by the arm and hauled him to his feet. “Pretend you’re resisting me,” he whispered in his ear. Kevin made a half-hearted attempt at running, but the guard was stronger and taller than him (not that it took a lot), and dragged him back inside.

“Tran giving you trouble?” asked another guards that saw them pass.

“What do you expect?” answered Ezekiel, sounding irritated. Kevin was about to ask where he was taking him, but the guard guided him towards a door he knew all too well.

The aisle that finished in the isolation cells was miraculously empty, and after looking around, Ezekiel planted himself where he could see if anyone was coming.

“You’ve got five minutes,” he told Kevin.

The boy didn’t need to hear more. He laid down on his stomach, until his eyes were next to the food slot.

“Sam?” he called.

There were some movements inside the cell, and then Sam’s fingers appeared on the slot.

“Hey, kid,” he said, and just hearing his voice loosened the knot in Kevin’s stomach that all of this would be a trap. “How are you doing?”

“I’m dealing,” Kevin said, after swallowing a couple of times. He extended his hand to touch Sam’s. “You?”

“Why, I’m having the time of my life,” Sam laughed. “Really, don’t worry about me. This is nothing my old man didn’t do to me for kicks on any given weekend.”

“What’s gonna happen now?” Kevin asked.

“Well, it’s complicated,” said Sam. “I’m already in a max security prison, and that didn’t stop me from keep on killing. They’re probably gonna keep me here until they decide to charge me for Lucifer’s death. Henriksen’s gonna convince the Attorney General to ask for the death penalty, and I don’t think this time he’s going to say no. If they find me guilty, they’re moving me to death row.”

The words “death penalty” sent a shiver down Kevin’s back, and he tightened his grip on Sam’s hand.

“Hey, I’m not dead yet,” Sam said. “What’s the saying? When there’s life there’s hope? Well, there’s still hope. My brother’s bound to find out about this. He’s got some contacts that can help. And if everything else fails…”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Kevin understood he wasn’t going to let them kill him. If he was going to die, then he would die in his own terms. He shook his head. There was no reason to think like that. Not just yet.

“What you need me to do?” he asked instead.

“Tell Henriksen you’ve got a change of heart,” Sam instructed him. “You want to testify against me, in exchange for a reduction. Keep your head low, and don’t get in trouble. If you need anything, go to Zeke. He’s alright.”

Kevin looked over his shoulder. Ezekiel was still standing at the end of the aisle, watching attentively in case anybody came.

“You understand, Kevin?”

“Yes,” said Kevin, and he repeated the instructions perfectly.

“Good,” Sam approved. “Hang in there, okay? We might still make it.”

 _Too bad Adam couldn’t make it_ , Kevin thought, but didn’t say out loud. After one last squeeze, Sam’s hand disappeared, and Ezekiel kneeled next to the slot to lock it.

“Why are you helping him?” Kevin asked, as the guard escorted him out of there.

“You’ve got your reasons, I’ve got mine,” Ezekiel replied, with a shrug. He fidgeted with the key of Kevin’s cell door. “Maybe I think he did us a favor by getting rid of Lucifer. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

Kevin nodded, and Ezekiel left without looking back. Half an hour later, the guard found him absorbed in his book, and warned him the lights would be turning off at any minute. Kevin didn’t pay attention. In fact, he hadn’t been reading for a while. He was actually calculating, if the worst came to happen, how many sheets would be necessary to hold his weight.


	9. Demolition Lovers

“What you think? Blonde chick or redhead boy?” Meg asked, holding a wig in each hand.

“I don’t understand why you need to leave the cabin to begin with,” Castiel protested, frowning. “The risk of someone identifying you is too great.”

“We’re running out of beer and coffee. I think that’s worth all sort of risks,” Meg said, as she stood in front of the mirror and put both wigs next to her face. Finally, she tossed the red wig on the bed and hanged the blonde one on the top of the mirror “You are welcome to come along, if you’re so worried.”

“I don’t believe three people will be any less suspicious than…” Castiel’s voice trailed off.

Meg had just taken off her shirt, and the sight of her naked back rendered Castiel speechless. Not because it was striking (which it was), but because, underneath the pale sunlight coming in through the window, Castiel was able to see a new aspect of Meg’s life: there were thin, rosy scars all over her skin, forming a random pattern, branding her subtly yet unmistakably. Castiel clenched his fists, resisting the temptation to stretch his hand and touch them.

“See anything you like?” she asked teasingly. Castiel saw her smirk in the mirror, and immediately looked away. “It’s okay. I know they’re not exactly discreet.”

She turned around and starting going through the clothes spread over the bed, with Castiel casting sideway glances in her direction. The scars were all over her stomach and her breasts too. Meg chose a simple sport bra and a something that looked like a cushion that Castiel couldn’t identify.

“In case you’re wondering, these are courtesy of my stepfather,” she told him, nonchalantly. “Crowley. Bastard liked to cut. But never the arms or the face. Just places no one but him would be seeing.”

Castiel didn’t want to think about the implications of what she was saying. Meg tied the cushion around her abdomen, and only then Castiel realized what it was: a fake pregnancy belly.

“What happened to your stepfather?” Castiel asked.

“No idea,” she answered, with a shrug, as she pumped air into the cushion to make it bigger. “I ran away when I was sixteen and never looked back. I was decided to make something of my life, so I became a nurse and helped a lot of people.”

“You killed them,” Castiel pointed.

“In my book, it’s the same thing,” Meg shrugged. “They were suffering. Some of them were begging for death, but weren’t strong enough to bring it on themselves. So I did them the favor.”

Meg stopped squeezing the pump and turned to observe her profile in the mirror. She pulled a dress over her head, and made sure the fake belly was completely hidden by adding a coat. She added some stuffing inside her bra, and nodded to her reflection. To the casual observer, she could have been easily six or seven months pregnant.

“And the man you killed in the alleyway?” Castiel asked.

“Dean’s been telling you bedtime stories, I see,” Meg laughed. She tied her long black hair, and forced it under a net. “I was bored. He was asking for it.”

Castiel was certain there was more to the story than Meg was letting on, but he didn’t insist. Meg placed the blonde wig over her head, and added a pair of thick-framed glasses. She stared at her face in the mirror for a while.

“Sam loved them,” she commented. “My scars, I mean. Used to trace them with his fingers and his tongue. Said they made me unique. I thought they were ugly, I thought Crowley had made me ugly and a monster.”

“You’re neither of those things,” said Castiel, and it was surprisingly easy how those words rolled out of his tongue even when he had seen firsthand what Meg was capable off.

“Oh, but I am,” Meg replied, with a grin. “I mean, I know now I’m not ugly, but I _am_ a monster.”

She walked to where Castiel was sitting and stood in front of him. Castiel stood up, because for some reason, he thought that’s what she expected of him.

“And it wasn’t Crowley who turned me into this. Sam and Dean didn’t make me more violent,” she continued. “They just helped me… embrace my nature in more creative ways.”

“What kind of nature is that?” asked Castiel, with a frown.

“Well, you said it yourself: a demonic one,” she laughed.

Castiel didn’t seem to find it funny. He remained silent, staring into Meg’s big brown eyes for a while.

“I don’t understand where you’re going with this,” he said, finally.

“Maybe I’m trying to tell you shouldn’t feel bad about _your_ nature,” she replied. “Trust me: if there’s someone less judgmental than killers, I hadn’t met them.”

“I am not a killer,” Castiel stated.

“But you’re _something_ ,” Meg said.

“I am Jimmy’s guardian,” Castiel said, because that was what he had been repeating to himself ever since he realized the truth of his identity.

“Yes, and that’s very well,” said Meg, rolling her eyes, like she thought Castiel was being obtuse on purpose. “But that wasn’t what I meant. I’m gonna let you in a little secret. Come here,” she added, arching a finger for Castiel to get closer.

After some hesitation, Castiel took a step towards her. Without any warning, Meg stood on the tip of her toes, looped her arms around his neck and crashed her lips against his. Castiel was startled, so he just stayed there, his arms hanging loose at the sides of his body, not sure how to react. Then she backed down and placed her mouth next to his ear.

“I like you a lot,” she whispered. “And Dean likes you, too.”

The bedroom’s door opened, and Dean popped his head in. He was wearing a thick fake beard, a cap and had some shades hanging from his shirt.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” Meg smiled, turning to him. She fished for something inside the pockets of her coat, and took out a glistening wedding band she slid in her own finger. “All ready.”

“Awesome,” Dean said, and extended his hand to her. As usual, Meg walked to him and he hugged her briefly before looking over her shoulder. “You sure you’ll be okay, Cas?”

Castiel, who was still mesmerized by the ghostly heat of Meg’s lips, didn’t seem to register the question.

“Cas?” Dean called him again, and this time Castiel snapped out of it.

“Yes,” he assured him. “I’ll… I’ll be just fine.”

“You’re not having a headache or anything, are you?” Dean frowned and approached him until his green eyes were everything Castiel could fix his gaze into. “We can stay if you’re not feeling well.”

“I’m alright, Dean,” he insisted, although he was sure the timid tone of his voice gave him away. “Don’t worry about me. Besides, the faster you leave, the faster you’ll come back, right?”

“Yeah, you got a point there,” Dean admitted, but he still vacillated for a moment. Then he looked for something in the interior of his jacket, and pulled out a cell phone. “Listen, if anything happens, just call us.”

“Dean?” Meg called him. She seemed to be as confused, if not more, than Castiel himself.

“We’re on speed dial,” Dean continued, still offering the cell phone to Castiel. “We’ll bring our asses back as fast as we can.”

Castiel stared at the cell phone, then at Meg, and then at Dean, like he was expecting the killer to realize the implications of what he was doing. Even if they left Castiel alone, and even if he abandoned the cabin, they knew he couldn’t possibly go too far. But with a cell phone at his disposal, his possibilities of getting away were far better. He could even call the cops on them, and in less than it took to say it, they’d be caught and thrown in jail just like Sam.

Dean wasn’t handing him a phone for emergencies. He was handing him a weapon that could destroy them and hoping Castiel would not use it. Meg seemed to be aware of it, because her mouth was hanging open, like she had a protest she couldn’t quite formulate caught in her throat, but Dean remained exactly where he was. When Castiel still hesitated, Dean grabbed his hands, put the cell phone in it, and made Castiel close his fingers over it.

“For whatever reason,” Dean insisted, looking straight into Castiel’s eyes. “Okay?”

“O-Okay,” Castiel stuttered.

The cell phone burned in his hand, just as Dean touch when he patted him affectionately on the cheek, before turning around to leave for the garage. Meg crooked an eyebrow in Castiel’s direction, as if to say “What did I tell you?” and then followed her partner. Castiel still needed a few seconds to gather his thoughts, and when he did, he walk out to the living room, unsure of the reason: maybe to return the phone to Dean, maybe to tell him it was a bad idea, or maybe just to thank him.

But by the time he got there, all he could do was watch them driving away through the open window.

 

* * *

 

 

Castiel spent the next few hours harboring a mild existential crisis. To keep himself busy, he did what he had seen Meg do in such situations: he went to the basement and came back up with a bunch of cleaning tools, decided to leave the cabin impeccable. This was not the easiest task to accomplish, since his hands kept trembling, and every five minutes he felt the impulse to take the phone out of his pocket and just stare at it.

He was overwhelmed. Until Meg had kissed him, he had never been touched so delicately. Until Dean had literally put his life in his hands, Castiel had never been trusted before, not even by Jimmy. _Especially_ not by Jimmy.

He walked into Dean and Meg’s bedroom, and stood in front of the mirror, the same mirror Meg had been using to try out wigs. He observed the man standing in front of him, paying attention to him maybe for the first time in years. He was almost as tall as Dean, although leaner. He had bright blue eyes, black hair and a three days old scruff growing in his cheeks and his chin.

He had always thought about that face as _Jimmy’s_ face, that body as _Jimmy’s_ body. He had never been in charge of it for so long (months now, with Jimmy showing up less and less and far between). He fed it, he carried it around, he lived inside it, but he’d always considered his physicality as a matter of mere circumstance.

But now (and for some time now, if he was honest with himself), he wanted to do something _with_ the body. He wanted to hug Dean the way Meg hugged him, possessively and tight. He wanted to kiss Meg again and trace her scars with his fingertips. He had absolutely no experience with that sort of thing. Jimmy had always slept only with Amelia, his lawful wife in the eyes of God, and if he’d ever found another woman or (the horror!) man attractive, he would push those thoughts to the back of his mind, where Castiel could get a hold of them.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Castiel told his reflection. “You want to share their bed, just like you wanted to snap Amelia’s neck. And because you can’t bring yourself to admit it, I am the one stuck with these feelings.”

There was no answer, of course.

Castiel waited a few seconds, fearing he would feel the familiar headache that announced the other side of him was about to emerge, but nothing happened.

“Are you gone?” he asked.

Not a sound. He was alone in his own mind.

“I guess it doesn’t matter if you are,” Castiel concluded. “It doesn’t matter if you’re cowering behind me. I want this. For me. I want them. And I am wanted in return.”

Saying the words out loud gave him a strange sense of certainty, of power. A fuzzy, warmth sensation started extending in his chest. He heard the rumble of the motor outside, and clenching the phone in his hand, he ran to the cabin’s door, ready to receive both Meg and Dean with a smile and his newfound resolution of embracing the nature he had been denying for so long.

And he would have done just that, but then Meg bolted inside and Castiel barely had time to register she had pulled her wig out and her eyes were puffy before she ran up to him and hid her face in his chest.

“Meg? What is it?” he asked, confused, as he held her tight. He lifted his head, and saw Dean, with the same anguish in his expression, biting his lips.

“It’s Sam,” he said.

 

* * *

 

The papers said that Sam had killed a prison guard, and his trial would be beginning in a couple of weeks. If found guilty, the Attorney General, Richard Roman, would certainly ask for his execution. Most of the articles also contained a list of Sam’s known victims, and a reminder that Dean and Meg were still on the loose, along with a man named Jimmy Novak, now thought to be his accomplice.

As Meg and Dean had come to learn, most news outlets generally got everything wrong, but at the heart of it, there was always some truth. And of course, they would be basking in such a sensational crime, calling Sam the most bloodthirsty killer since the Zodiac Killer, and publishing a lot of bullshit debate about the death penalty and its moral implications.

Those were unimportant. Dean was convinced if they could, they were going to give Sam the needle.

“So what do we do?” asked Meg, after she wipe her eyes and recover her usual no-nonsense attitude. Dean didn’t ask. “Dean, we have to do something,” she insisted. “We can’t let them…”

“I know!” Dean groaned. “You think I don’t know that? He’s my brother, and I’m not gonna let him die.”

He stood up and started pacing around the room.

“You have a plan, don’t you?” Castiel asked. “You and Sam must have agreed on something if this came to happen.”

Dean stopped his pacing next to the window. In the darkened glass, Castiel could see the sad smile on his lips.

“Andorra,” he muttered.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a little country right between France and Spain,” he explained. “No extradition treaty. Sam always said we should retire there when we grew old.”

“You’re scared of planes,” Meg reminded him, and Dean laughed, gloomily, like that was the only realistic objection to that plan.

“We have a friend,” he continued. “Her name’s Bela Talbot. She’s loaded with drug money. Sam went down on her once, and apparently he did it so good she promised to do him a favor in a rainy day.”

“Well, now it’s pouring like a bitch,” Meg pointed. “I say we call her.”

“No, _we_ don’t do anything,” Dean said, turning back to them. “ _I_ am going to call her, and _I_ am going to break him out, or die trying. You… you and Cas should go.”

He added the last part in a whisper, like it pained to say those words. Meg was taken aback and paralyzed, but Castiel stood up.

“Go where?” he asked. “Where do you think we could possibly go without you? Alternatively, how far do you think you’d get without us?”

“You saying my plan is reckless?”

“It’s _suicidal_ , Dean,” Meg specified, and stood up as well. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re coming with you.”

“Meg…” Dean began, shaking his head.

“No, shut up,” she cut him off. “You want to go out in a blaze of glory trying to save Sam, that’s fine. But don’t think for one second that I’d want to go on if I lose both of you.”

Dean gritted his teeth, and remained silent. Then he raised his eyes until he met Cas’ gaze.

“You feel the same?” he asked, in a whisper. “You’re coming too?”

“Of course,” Castiel said. He didn’t even need to think about it. It was the only logical thing to do. He’d decided to love Dean and Meg, so he would love them to the bitter end.

Dean sighed deeply, bit his lips, and then nodded.

And there was really nothing left to discuss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter of this title is a reference to yet another MCR song. I don't know why, but I always think about serial killers when I listen to them. Tht, or vampires.


	10. Last Night on Earth

“So you’re in trouble again, big boy,” Gabriel groaned as he sat in front of Sam. “And after everything I did to keep you out of death row. One might think you don’t appreciate my job.”

Sam grinned at his lawyer. Unlike so many others, he wasn’t scared of Sam, because he was probably used to dealing with people like him and worse, if that was possible. Apparently he got a thrill from defending murderers and drug lords. In public, he had defended Sam to make an ethical point about the death penalty he’d use to advance his political career. In private, he had been hired by someone with a “private interest” in Sam’s well-being. Sam didn’t have to ask who.

“No to fear,” Gabriel said, opening several folders in front of Sam. “Everybody knew Pellegrino was dirty. We can prove he was being a hardass on you…”

“What about Adam?” Sam interrupted him.

“Please,” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “You can play those mind games with Henriksen if you like, but don’t lie to me. You didn’t kill Adam.”

“I confessed,” Sam pointed. “They have a witness that’s willing to testify.”

“They also have all sort of forensic evidence that contradict that story,” Gabriel pointed.

“Oh, yeah?” Sam laughed. “What does the evidence say, exactly?”

Gabriel’s everlasting smirk wavered, and he reached for a lollypop inside his jacket pocket.

“Inconclusive,” he admitted, reluctantly. “You and the guards made a pretty little mess of the scene.”

“Then how can you be sure I did _not_ kill him?” Sam shrugged. “And before you say anything, Gabriel, let me guarantee you none of Lucifer’s henchmen are going to come forward. It’s their neck on the line too.”

“Give me a break, Winchester,” Gabriel begged. “If you only killed the guard, then I can still argue it was self-defense or some bullshit. If you say you also kill Adam, they’re gonna put your ass to the needle for sure.”

Sam remained silent, while he waited for Gabriel to catch up. After tapping his fingers on the table for a moment, Gabriel’s eyes opened wide in realization.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” he asked. “What the hell, Winchester? Do you wanna commit suicide by death penalty? Because let me tell you, there are some really less complicated ways to do that, and they don’t involve screwing my career in the process.”

“Don’t ask questions if you aren’t ready to hear the answer, Gabriel,” Sam said. The lawyer backed off slightly, as far as the iron chair allowed him to, chewing on his lollypop nervously.

“Fine,” he muttered, half irritated, half scared. “Have it your way.”

 

* * *

 

 

Castiel woke up with a jolt. For a moment, he was disoriented as to where he was and why was his neck hurting, but then he remembered: he was in the backseat of a car they had stolen two states away, and they had stopped moving.

“Cas?” Meg’s voice called him from the passenger seat.

“Yes,” Castiel straightened up and look at her. “I’m here.”

Meg sighed, relieved, and squeezed Castiel’s hand tight.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him. “Is it just you in there?”

Castiel nodded.

“I’m not sure Jimmy is ever coming back,” he confessed. On the other hand, they probably wouldn’t live long enough for it to happen.

“Good, that’s very good,” Meg said. “We have a long night ahead.”

Castiel didn’t need to ask what she meant.

As they got closer to Texas, Dean’s anxiety had been increasing and his normally carefree demeanor had disappeared completely. Sometimes he would leave Meg and Cas in motel rooms for hours on end while he went to look for public phones from which make “arrangements”. Castiel didn’t want to inquire what those “arrangements” were, but Meg had finally exploded one day, and demanded Dean let them in on the plan.

“I’ll follow you to Hell itself, but don’t expect me to go in blind!” she’d screamed at him.

After half an hour of them shouting at each other, Castiel had taken it upon himself to drag Dean out of the room and remind him why it was important not to draw attention on themselves.

“What are you afraid of, Dean?” he’d asked him, as he watched the other man pace around, trying to collect himself.

“What is not to be afraid of?” Dean had replied, forcing a mere ghost of his usual laughter. Castiel had remained silent, until Dean collected himself.

“Right.”

He’d told them the details. It didn’t take long, maybe three or four minutes. Afterwards, there’d been a heavy silent in the room. Castiel understood why he had been afraid to tell them: he’d been convinced they’d back down as soon as they’d got the whole picture.

“If any of you want to get off…” Dean had said, avoiding their gazes.

“We’re not getting off,” Meg had stated. “So you can stop that bullshit now.”

Castiel thought that would be the end of it, but every now and Dean still reminded them they could opt out, and Meg glared in his direction until he shut up. But at least he had started to share the development of his plan with them, and even allowed them to come along two days before, when they’d met a man named Alistair, who delivered a silver briefcase along with Bela Talbot’s regards.

Dean returned from the motel’s office and tapped on the window with the keychain.

“Lucky seven,” he commented, as his partners got off the car and followed him into the room. “Might be a good sign.”

“I don’t understand how a random number can affect the circumstances of our situation,” Castiel replied, as he closed the door behind them. “But granted, seven is a prime number. Prime numbers can be intimidating.”

Dean stopped midway taking off his cap, and Meg just blinked in Castiel’s direction. Then, as if they had agreed on it, they both burst out laughing.

“What?” Castiel asked, confused, looking alternatively at one and then at the other.

“Nothing, Cas, nothing,” Dean gasped, as he wiped the tears from his eyes. “Just, uh… never change, okay?”

Castiel was about to ask why would he ever change, but then Meg walked up to him, put her hand in the back of his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. This time, Castiel was half expecting it, half wishing for it, so he wrapped his arms around Meg’s waist and confidently turned around to push her against the wall, running his fingers through her hair, squeezing his body against hers as if to feel every inch of it.

He heard Dean chuckling somewhere at his left, and then one of his arms went around Castiel’s chest. Delicately, Dean placed his hand on his cheek, and made him look up before kissing him as well. His mouth was firmer, and Castiel got lost in the taste of alcohol and the sensation of Dean’s stubble scraping his cheek.

“Well, last night on Earth,” Dean muttered, as Meg hid her face in Castiel’s neck and nibbled his skin softly. “We should make the most of it.”

A shiver ran down Castiel’s spine when Dean’s fingers found their way up his shirt.

“Are you not going to fruitlessly suggest we should leave you?” Castiel asked.

“No,” Dean shook his head. “I’m done with that. You both know what you’re getting into. And honestly… I need you if I’m going to pull this off.”

“About time you came to your senses,” Meg muttered, and somehow managed to kiss Dean over Castiel’s shoulder while rubbing her body against Cas’.

If it'd been up to Castiel, he would have just stayed there, sandwiched between the both of them, exchanging kisses and simple touches. But then Meg unzipped his pants and slid a hand down his underwear, and Dean started fighting with the buttons of shirt.

“I…” he gasped. “I don’t know how to…”

“Shh, don’t worry, baby,” Meg whispered.

“We do,” Dean added.

Cas’ heart was pounding so loud he was sure Meg and Dean could hear it. They undressed him slowly, stopping every so often to kiss him, lick him, touch him and praise him, telling him how beautiful he was, how much they had wanted this for a long time now. Castiel felt dizzy and light-headed, but he still managed to help Meg out of her shirt, and to not stumble on his own feet when Dean started guiding them towards the bed.

They fell on top of the covers together, a mess of limbs, mouths and naked skin. Castiel could no longer tell where he ended and the others began, all he could tell was that he was wrapped on a whirlwind of heat and sweat, and he closed his eyes to keep some resemblance of control. Someone was grabbing him by the hair and muttering obscenities in his ear, while a teasing tongue was playfully working his erection. Castiel was discovering that Meg was all nails, teeth and roughness, like she wanted to make sure she left a mark on her lovers, but Dean was careful touches and tender kisses, and the combination of the two was almost too much to bear.

“I’m gonna, I’m gonna…” he moaned, and two firm hands pressed his shoulder against the mattress, while another one kept his hips steady. A white light flashed behind Castiel’s eyes, and Castiel was barely aware, between the shakes and the pleasure invading every inch of his body, that he was emptying himself on Dean’s mouth.

When he recovered his sight, Meg and Dean were sharing a passionate kiss. Then he realized Meg was actually tasting his cum on Dean’s lips, and that would have made him hard right away again if he hadn’t just finished. He sat down, and with trembling fingers, he reached for Dean’s shoulders and Meg waist, and they both turned to him immediately, holding him tight and crashing their foreheads against him.

“Hope you hadn’t had enough, angel,” Meg told him. “Because we have just started.”

 

* * *

 

Ezekiel walked into Kevin’s cell to wake him up, but it wasn’t necessary. He hadn’t slept a wink.

“Do I have to wear these?” he protested, when Ezekiel handed him a suit and tie.

“Court protocol,” the guard replied, with a shrug, and turned around to give Kevin some privacy.

Kevin sighed, changed as fast as he could, and then let Ezekiel cuff his hands and lead him outside the yard, where he signed him off before walking him outside.

“I heard they’re taking ten years off your sentences,” commented Ezekiel.

“Yeah,” Kevin nodded. “If I’m lucky I’ll get out when I’m eighty or so.”

Ezekiel let out an amused huff, and accompanied him to the back of the armored van waiting for Kevin.

“Good luck,” he wished him.

“Yeah,” Kevin answered, with his usual tone of indifference.

The van’s back door opened, and a guard with black hair and blue eyes came down to grab Kevin by the arm and help him up. Kevin was just about to hop on, but then took a good look of what was inside the van, and decided he might as well take the chance to say it.

“Hey, Gadreel,” he called the guard.

Ezekiel looked at him over his shoulder, frowning. Kevin showed him his biggest grin, the one he had learnt from Sam.

“I remember you too,” he said.

Then he jumped in, and the blue-eyed guard closed the door behind him. Outside the window, Kevin caught a glimpse of Gadreel’s horrified face as they drove away before turning to the men that were accompanying him.

Well, the two that were still breathing anyway.

“Are you Dean?” he asked to the blue-eyed one.

“No,” the one with the freckles answered, with a keychain tinkling in his hand. “I’m Dean.”

“Sam said you’d show up,” Kevin commented, extended his wrists in his direction to be freed from the cuffs. “I have to admit I had my doubts,” he pushed the guard sitting next to him. The corpse fell over the bench and then rolled onto the floor. “I like your style.”

Dean smirked, and then kicked a silver briefcase in Kevin’s direction.

“I’ve been told you know how to work these,” he said.

Kevin opened the briefcase, and his eyes lit up. He hadn’t had access to such resources since he’d been caught, and he intended to make good use of them.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a tense silence in the courtroom, only interrupted by the occasional rumple of papers and the thrum of pens against the wooden tables. Finally, Gabriel stood up.

“Your Honor, it’s been an hour,” he pointed. “If the Attorney General can’t produce his witness…”

“Is there anything wrong, counselor?” the judge asked, casting a severe look in Roman’s direction.

His assistant had been talking on the phone in hurried whispers, and when she finally stood up and muttered something into his boss’ ear, he seemed irritated.

“Your Honor, there seems to be a problem with the witness transport,” Roman said. “If you could give us a little longer…”

“How much longer…?”

“Oh, let him, Gabriel,” Sam interrupted his lawyer, rolling his eyes. “It’s not a matter of life or death. Oh, wait.”

“Winchester, for God’s sake,” Gabriel warned him through gritted teeth.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sam shrugged. “Kevin’s just probably planning to enter with a bang.”

Roman was now talking to Henriksen, and whatever they were saying seemed to be important. Henriksen glanced in Sam’s direction, and the killer waved at him with a smile. That was all it took. Henriksen’s face distorted in a panicky expression, he told something to Roman, and then flew out of the room.

“Councilor,” the judge called Roman again. “Is there anything we should know?”

Roman opened his mouth to answer, but his words got lost forever.

There was a loud explosion right outside the room. Everyone looked astonished at each other for a second or two, like they weren’t sure how they were supposed to react.

A second explosion shook the court’s ground, someone shouted “Fire!” and then there was chaos.

While people stomped each other on the way to the door, and the guards did what little they could to organize a controlled escape, Gabriel turned to his client.

“This was you!” he screamed on top of the noise. “You planned this whole thing!”

Sam didn’t even try denying it. A group of guards lead by Henriksen made way through the fleeing crowd. The FBI agent stood in front of Sam, pointing at him with his gun.

“Both hands where I can see them!” he ordered. “Not one false move, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Victor,” Sam said, standing up, buttoning up the jacket of his cheap suit and docilely offering his wrists for the cuffing.

“And take him too!” Henriksen ordered, pointing at Gabriel.

“Hey, watch it, watch it!” Gabriel shouted, offended, as another guard cuffed him. “This suit’s worth more than you make in a year!”

“Don’t worry, Gabriel,” Sam said calmly, as he let Henriksen lead him down the hallways. “They can’t prove a damn thing against you.”

“Where’s that little rat of Tran?!” Henriksen was shouting into his phone. “How did you let him…? NO, I’M NOT CALMING DOWN!”

Outside, there was a pandemonium. There were firemen and paramedics, putting out the fire of the prison van that was burning, tending to the people with respiratory problems, and supervising the court’s evacuation.

“I am sending him back into the prison!” Henriksen said. “I need you to…”

A third bomb detonated, this one so close to them the ensuing wave made the guards around Sam stumble and Henriksen fall square on his ass. Sam elbowed one of the guys in the face, stomped on the other’s foot, and put the chain of his handcuffs against Gabriel’s neck. He walked away slowly, like he wasn’t fleeing, holding his lawyer against him like a human shield. By the time Henriksen managed to get his weapon up, Sam had already dragged Gabriel to a white van parked on the other side of the street.

“Thank you for everything, Gabriel,” Sam whispered in his ear. “Give Bela my best when you see her.”

And with that, he let go of Gabriel and climbed into the car. Henriksen fired two shots that barely managed to hit the car’s bumpers, and only served to aggravate the panic around him, as people duck and screamed thinking it was another bomb. Henriksen got on his feet and ran down the street behind the car, shouting obscenities at everyone who got in their way.

But it was too late. The van disappeared around a corner, and the Winchesters were out of his reach again.


	11. Epilogue.

In the twenty-four hours following their escape, Victor Henriksen worked nonstop without so much as a power nap to localize the Winchester and their accomplices: Meg Masters, James Novak, and Kevin Tran. He found the bodies of the guards that were supposed to escort Tran, and pulled all the strings he had available to make their autopsies a priority. He personally questioned Gabriel Speigh, and he denied knowing anything about Sam’s plans. He alleged attorney-client privilege to protect another dangerous client of his, the notorious dealer Bela Talbot. Before Henriksen could get to her, however, she had already fled the country with destination unknown.

Though the van was found abandoned with the body of a man named Sal Moriarty just a few days later, and Henriksen suspected the killers were now driving Moriarty’s stolen 1967 Chevrolet Impala, all his effort were vain. The trace soon grew cold, and Henriksen’s bosses, furious, removed him from the case under the claim he should’ve known better than to deal with Kevin Tran. His replacement, Michael Cohen, did an exhaustive research and found Bobby Singer’s cabin, or what was left of it: it had been deliberately burned to the ground weeks before.

That had been a tough decision for Dean, like throwing a piece of his personal history to the flames he loved so much. He’d hesitated through every step of the way, while he poured accelerant in all of the rooms, and well into the moment he finally lit the match.

But he knew if they made it, there was no turning back this time. They’d have to keep running forever. Running where, well, he didn’t know. He discovered he didn’t care, though, when he glanced in the review mirror and saw Meg slumbering with her head on Cas’ shoulder, as Sam stretched his hand to put it on his knee.

“I missed you,” he said.

Dean smirked. “I know,” he answered, squeezing his brother’s hand tight. “I missed you too.”

They hadn’t much time for more demonstration of happiness, as the priority was to put as much distance as they could between them and Henriksen. But after almost two days of taking twelve-hours turns behind the wheel in an almost oppressive silence, like none of them could believe they were alive; they finally found a place isolated enough for them to stop.

It was atop of a hill from where they could watch the rising sun. Meg was the first one to explode in a fit of laughter, and then put her arms around Sam’s neck. He lifted her without effort and kissed her until they were both out of breath, and Dean grabbed Cas by the shoulders and held him close. Kevin just smiled.

Then they drove to the next town over, and dropped Kevin off at the bus station.

“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Sam asked him, for what felt the hundredth time.

“Nah,” Kevin shrugged. “You’ve got your brother and your girl. You don’t need me anymore. And besides, someone has to remind that bastard of Gadreel that he didn’t fool us with the whole ‘nice guardsman’ charade. I remember what he did to Adam.”

Sam could have gone on a two-hour seminar on why that was a bad idea, but he knew nothing would convince Kevin of backing down from his vengeance. He thought, as he kissed him goodbye and watched him board the bus to God knew where, that he’d grown up too fast.

“What about you, Cas?” Dean asked. “You leaving us too?”

To the casual observer, the question might have sounded innocuous, but Sam knew his brother better than that. He noticed immediately by his tone of voice that Dean was anxious, and Meg tensed her shoulders and held her breath. Sam also looked in Castiel’s direction. He was still unsure about him, but he figured he’d like him once he got to know him.

Castiel tilted his head, confused.

“Why would I ever do that?”


End file.
